Prosecutors said Amber Kelly’s earlier plea for help showed the violence did not appear without warning.
ATLANTA, Ga. — The murder case against Mamadi Tambajang was prosecuted not only as a fatal assault in Sandy Springs, but as the end point of an abuse pattern that Amber Kelly had described to police months before she was killed.
That framing helped explain why the conviction drew broader attention in metro Atlanta. Prosecutors said Kelly had reported threats, prior assaults and fear well before the killing, and that Tambajang was already facing two other cases involving her when she died. When jurors later convicted him and a judge imposed a life sentence with the possibility of parole plus 20 years, officials cast the case as an example of domestic violence that had escalated over time instead of erupting from nowhere.
One of the clearest pieces of that pattern came from a 2023 emergency call. Prosecutors said Kelly told dispatchers that Tambajang was violent and had threatened to murder her twice that week. At trial and in public comments after the verdict, that statement became a shorthand for the state’s argument that the danger had been visible well before May 2024. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis later said the case showed an escalating pattern, while domestic violence prosecutor Asia Baysah said abuse often grows worse before it turns deadly. Those comments did not answer every question about what happened inside the apartment, but they showed how the state wanted jurors to read the timeline: as a series of warnings, not a single unexplained act.
The killing itself came into view on May 15, 2024, when Tambajang walked into the Sandy Springs Police Department and said he had harmed Kelly. Officers were told she was at an apartment and might be dead. Patrol units went there and found her dead inside. The first public police account was brief, saying Tambajang had been charged with malice murder and aggravated assault and that detectives had obtained search warrants for the apartment and for his mother’s apartment. Later reports added more detail. Prosecutors said jurors saw body-camera footage in which Tambajang said he had “put his hands on her” and had “snapped.” Investigators also came to believe Kelly had been killed a day or two before he surrendered, and prosecutors said he had gone to his mother’s house in South Carolina before finally coming to police.
By the time the case reached a jury in March 2026, prosecutors had turned the medical and physical evidence into a direct challenge to the defense theory. Baysah said Kelly suffered more than 25 blunt-force injuries, and prosecutors described the scene as horrific. Dilligard said the defense argued Tambajang had been provoked and lost control, but the state said the severity of the injuries, the delay in seeking help and the earlier record of violence all pointed the other way. Prosecutors also stressed what did not happen after the assault: no 911 call for medical aid, no immediate request for help and no effort to get Kelly treatment. Instead, they said, he waited, traveled and then appeared at police headquarters claiming uncertainty about whether she was alive.
The verdict settled the jury question, but not the full court process. Local reports said Tambajang was convicted of murder and related charges and then sentenced to life with the possibility of parole plus 20 years. A spokesman for the Fulton County Public Defender’s Office said defense lawyers had filed a motion for a new trial and would keep representing him after conviction. That means the case remains active even after sentencing. Depending on how the judge rules, the next steps could include post-trial hearings, a written order and an appeal. Those procedures are routine in major felony cases, but they now unfold against a record that prosecutors built around repeated warnings from the victim herself.
Kelly’s family gave the legal record a more personal edge. Her mother, Sharon Henderson, said the moment police told her of her daughter’s death felt as if her heart stopped. Relatives also said they had urged Kelly to leave Tambajang, but believed she stayed because she thought he could change. Their comments did not alter the facts presented to jurors, yet they helped explain why the case resonated beyond a standard murder prosecution. To prosecutors, the threat call, the earlier cases and the final assault formed one chain. To the family, the same chain ended in the loss of a 31-year-old woman they had tried to protect.
Tambajang remains in the post-conviction phase after the jury’s guilty verdict and sentence. The next key development will be action by the trial court on the motion for a new trial.
Author note: Last updated April 17, 2026.