Nearly two years after police found Kelly dead, her mother’s words still frame the case as more than a courtroom result.
ATLANTA, Ga. — When Mamadi Tambajang was convicted in the killing of Amber Kelly, the legal outcome answered the criminal case in court, but it did not change the way Kelly’s family described the moment they learned she was gone.
That response has remained one of the most powerful parts of the public record around the case. Kelly’s mother, Sharon Henderson, said she felt as if her heart stopped when police told her of her daughter’s death. Her relatives also said they had urged Kelly to leave the relationship before the killing. Their account turned the case into more than a prosecution built around body-camera footage, charging documents and forensic injury counts. It also became a story about warnings seen by a family that could not prevent the final outcome.
The public record began with a police notification and a body in an apartment, but the family’s experience started at the front door. Henderson recalled officers arriving to tell her that her 31-year-old daughter had been killed. Later, in television interviews, relatives said they had repeatedly encouraged Kelly to leave Tambajang. They said she believed he could still be a good man. Those comments did not supply the forensic details that prosecutors later presented, yet they gave the case an emotional shape that stayed visible even after the legal story grew more detailed. As the prosecution moved forward, the family’s statements served as a reminder that every procedural step — the arrest, indictments, trial testimony and sentence — followed a loss that had already shattered a household.
The official case timeline was stark. On May 15, 2024, Tambajang went to Sandy Springs police headquarters and said he wanted to turn himself in after harming Kelly. Officers were sent to an apartment, where they found her dead. Early police reporting said Tambajang was charged with malice murder and aggravated assault and booked into the Fulton County Jail without bond. Investigators obtained search warrants for the apartment and for his mother’s apartment. Later, prosecutors said they believed Kelly had been killed a day or two before Tambajang surrendered, and said he had driven to his mother’s house in South Carolina before returning to Georgia and going to police. That delay became one of the most contested features of the case because prosecutors argued it showed he did everything except seek medical help.
As more facts emerged, officials portrayed the killing as part of a larger record. Prosecutors said Kelly had called 911 in 2023 and reported that Tambajang had threatened to murder her twice in one week. They also said he was out on bond in two other cases involving Kelly when she was killed. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis later called the matter a classic domestic violence case, saying the abuse had escalated. Prosecutor Asia Baysah said Kelly suffered more than 25 blunt-force injuries, underscoring the severity of the attack. The defense, according to Assistant District Attorney Jazmin Dilligard, argued that Tambajang “snapped” after being provoked. Prosecutors urged jurors to see something very different: a pattern that had been building long before the final assault inside the Sandy Springs apartment.
That dispute ended, at least for trial purposes, in March 2026. A Fulton County jury convicted Tambajang of murder and related charges, and local reports said the judge sentenced him to life with the possibility of parole plus 20 years. Even then, the case did not fully close. A spokesman for the Fulton County Public Defender’s Office said the defense had filed a motion for a new trial and would continue to represent Tambajang after conviction. That means the next chapter will unfold through post-trial motions and possible appeals rather than witness testimony. For the family, though, the sequence looks different: first the loss, then the wait, then the verdict.
What remains in the public memory is not only the language of charges or sentencing formulas, but the contrast between formal court language and the plain words spoken by those around Kelly. Henderson spoke of a heart-stopping shock. Relatives spoke of advice they had given and hopes they had held. Prosecutors spoke of a horrific scene and an escalating pattern. Taken together, those voices place the case at the meeting point of private grief and public justice, where a criminal file can be complete on paper while the damage it records remains unfinished for the people left behind.
The conviction and sentence are in place, but the court docket is still moving because the defense has filed a motion for a new trial. The next legal marker will be the trial court’s response to that filing in Fulton County.
Author note: Last updated April 17, 2026.