Mother Indicted in Baby Son’s Murder

June 26, 2022 – A Bartlett woman has been indicted on murder charges stemming from the 2020 death of her 2-year-old son who had sustained multiple internal injuries, broken ribs and bruising, said Shelby County Dist. Atty. Gen. Amy Weirich.

Keianna Hatchett, 27, was indicted on counts of first-degree murder in the perpetration of aggravated abuse of a child under 8 and first-degree murder in the perpetration of aggravated neglect of a child under 8.

The grand jury indictment was returned earlier this month and became public when she was taken into custody on Friday. She is being held on $750,000 bond.

At around 11 a.m. on Dec. 1, 2020, Hatchett notified police that she had just found her baby son, Kingston Young, unresponsive in a bedroom. First responders pronounced the boy dead soon after their arrival.

Hatchett told police they had spent the night at her boyfriend’s apartment on Ridge Drive near Riverdale Road and East Raines Road where the boy slept on a floor mattress in a spare bedroom. She said he had thrown up just before bedtime and that she had checked on him throughout the night.

The following morning she awakened her boyfriend and told him she had found her son face down on the floor and unresponsive.

Investigators on the scene noted bruises on the child’s chin and forehead, and scratches on his stomach and back. An autopsy later showed both healing and recent multiple injuries, including internal hemorrhaging, broken ribs, a liver laceration, and head trauma.

The case is being handled by Chief Prosecutor Eric Christensen of the District Attorney’s Special Victims Unit which prosecutes cases involving the most vulnerable in our community, including rape, sexual abuse and severe physical abuse of children, and elder abuse and vulnerable adult abuse.

The SVU was created as an expansion of the multi-agency Child Protection Investigative Team known as CPIT.