Early Sunday, a woman called Gwinnett County police to say she couldn’t find her 8-year-old daughter. The little girl, who wore glasses, was last seen in her Tweety Bird jacket and blue and white pajamas, her mother said.
But investigators don’t believe Nicole Amari Hall was ever missing.
Instead, it was Brittany Nicole Hall, Amari’s mother, who later told investigators where the child might be. On Tuesday morning, Amari’s body was found in a wooded area of a DeKalb County neighborhood about 15 miles from the hotel where the family was living, Gwinnett police Chief J.D. McClure said.
Brittany Hall and her partner have both been charged in the case, with the partner facing a murder charge.
“It’s extremely painful. It’s extremely painful. We all have family and we recognize the innocence of an 8-year-old child,” McClure said at a Tuesday afternoon news conference. “Although we can’t bring her back, we can bring those responsible for her death to justice.”
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Brittany Hall was living at the Hometown Studios at 7049 Jimmy Carter Boulevard with her three children and partner, Celeste Owens, according to police. Around 9:15 a.m. Sunday, Hall called authorities to report Amari missing.
Hall told investigators Amari had last been seen between midnight and 1 a.m. Sunday. And the mother said she was particularly worried because Amari had autism and was new to the area.
Investigators immediately launched a search to find the girl, going door to door at the hotel, McClure said. By noon Sunday, Gwinnett police had released to the media a photo of the girl, wearing a white tank top and pigtails. Anyone who had information about Amari’s whereabouts was asked to contact police.
But they quickly realized the mother’s statements, along with statements from Owens, didn’t match the information officers were gathering during their investigation.
“We compared statements that we had gotten from Brittany Hall and also her partner, Celeste Owens,” McClure said. “We compared those statements and recognized those statements were indeed false.”
McClure declined to speculate about a motive in the case. He said an autopsy, conducted by the Gwinnett County medical examiner, will provide more details about how Amari died and how long her body may have been in the woods near Juliet Drive and Stone Mill Trace in the Tucker area.
“I can’t speculate on why they reported her as missing,” McClure said. “But our investigation revealed Amari was not, in fact, missing. Very early in the investigation, we began to suspect foul play.”
On Sunday night, Owens was arrested and charged with six counts of first-degree cruelty to children and making false statements, jail records show. Her charges will be upgraded to include murder, McClure confirmed.
Late Monday, the girl’s mother was arrested and charged with making false statements, false report of a crime and five counts of first-degree cruelty to children, jail records show. Hall is also expected to be charged with concealing a death, McClure said.
The cruelty to children charges stem from an incident at another hotel where the family previously lived, McClure said. Gwinnett investigators had not previously been called to investigate a case involving Hall or Owens, he said.
Both Owens and Hall were being held without bond Tuesday afternoon. Hall’s two other children, a 6-year-old girl and a 5-year-old boy, were placed in protective custody, police said.
McClure said the child’s death remains under investigation. He thanked those at the hotel for their help, along with the officers who had hoped to find the girl alive.
“My heart goes out to the extended family of Amari Hall,” he said. “We worked diligently on this case. The investigators, from our uniform patrol officers who went out and searched the area, we worked extremely hard, and unfortunately these are not the results we had hoped for.”
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