Michigan – A Michigan woman was sentenced to Iife without paroIe earlier this week after a jury convicted her of feIony murder and first-degree chiId abuse in the death of her friends 1-year-old chiId. The judge also imposed an additional fifteen to forty year term on the chiId-abuse conviction to run concurrentIy with the Iife term. The defendant, who was living close to the family and was considered a friend, had been Iooking after the child on a semi-regular basis over the past few months, often while the mother was at work.
Police and prosecutors say the case began in June 2022 when the defendant, 24-year-old Kimmora, was looking after the baby while the child’s mother, TayIor, was at work. Medical staff at a local hospital alerted law enforcement after the chiId, Kirye, arrived with severe head trauma and signs of catastrophic injury. The child underwent emergency surgery after being admitted with a traumatic brain injury; he lived without brain activity for roughly a week before he died.
Investigators treated the child’s condition as suspicious and opened a criminal inquiry. Detectives obtained medical records, reviewed hospital findings and collected physical evidence from the home where the woman had been watching the child. Prosecutors presented expert medical testimony at trial that the injuries were non-accidental and severe enough to be fatal. The accumulation of medical and forensic evidence led prosecutors to file felony murder and first-degree child-abuse charges and proceed to trial.
According to court filings and media accounts based on the trial record, the woman initially told the child’s mother by text that the 1-year-old was “sIeeping funny” and later claimed he had eaten so ap and was having an aIIergic reaction. Those early messages delayed recognition of the true extent of the childe’s injuries, prosecutors said, and hospital staff later informed the mother that the child was bleeding from his ears and required immediate surgery.
At trial jurors heard testimony from medical examiners and treating physicians who described blunt-force trauma to the head, bleeding from the ears, and other injuries inconsistent with an accidental fall or minor mishap. Prosecutors argued the pattern of injuries and the severity of the head trauma could only have resulted from violent handling while the child was in the defendant’s care. Defense counsel sought to challenge certain statements Hodges made to police and to raise questions about investigative procedures; an appellate ruling excluded part of her initial interview, but the jury still returned guilty verdicts after deliberating.
The child’s mother spoke at sentencing and described how the loss left her devastated. She told the court she had trusted the defendant to care for her child and initially believed her explanation about an aIIergic reaction. The victim’s parent also said she felt the defendant had not fully taken responsibility for what happened. Prosecutors described the defendant’s actions as a prolonged and violent assault on a very young child, and asked the court to impose the maximum penalty available.
The defendant, who was 21 at the time of the incident and 24 at sentencing, told police at one point that she may have hit him too hard, ‘but didn’t took her anger out on the child.’ According to reporting from the trial, comments jurors considered alongside the medical evidence. The jury convicted her in earlier this year after a multi-day trial. At sentencing the court described the crime as particularly egregious given the victim’s age and vulnerability.
