After just two hours of deliberation, a jury in Gwinnett County, Georgia found Celeste Owens guilty on 21 counts related to the 2021 killing of her partner’s autistic 8-year-old daughter Amari Hall.
Now, she’s been sentenced to life without the possibility of parole, plus 235 years after prosecutors called the alleged abuse “barbaric,” per WSB-TV.
As detailed by Fox 5 Atlanta, Owens was found guilty on all of the charges she was facing, including three counts of felony murder, malice murder, aggravated battery, aggravated assault, 11 counts of cruelty to children, making a false statement, and concealing the death of another.
“This is by far, the most heinous, evil I have ever seen in my entire career and I do not understand it,” said Judge Angela Duncan during Owens’ sentencing. “You will never see the light of day; to perpetrate this type of behavior, cruelty and evilness upon another person.”
The prosecution argued that Owens acted alongside the child’s biological mother Brittany Hall in the abuse of Amari, while also abusing Brittany’s two other children. Brittany is still awaiting trial.
On November 20, 2021, Brittany reported Amari missing to police, leading to a search that culminated in the discovery of her body in a wooded area miles from the home three days later.
In presenting the state’s closing arguments at trial, prosecutor Sabrina Nizam told the jury of Owens, “This defendant helped beat the living life out of Amari.”
The prosecution argued, as covered by Fox 5, that it was Owens who fatally struck Amari, and then put her body in trash bags before dumping her in the forest, where she was ultimate found. All the while, both Brittany and Owens were claiming she had disappeared.
“Multiple wounds, in multiple locations, in multiple stages of healing,” said Gwinnett County associate medical examiner Dr. James Claude Upshaw Downs in his testimony. He further stated that her body showed evidence of multiple blunt force injuries, malnutrition, and battered child syndrome, all of which were contributing factors in her death.
Ladies and gentlemen, it was not one fatal blow,” Nizam argued to the jury, per Fox 5. “Every single blow was fatal to Amari.”
Nizam detailed for the jury some of the abuses Amari and her siblings allegedly suffered, including “Slapping them in the back of the head, the stomping, the blindfolding, the laying on the ground.”
According to CrimeOnline, Brittany originally tried to argue that Owens was responsible for all of the abuse her children suffered, along with Amira’s death. Security footage and interviews with the surviving children, though, told investigators a different story.
Investigators revealed they’d uncovered deleted Next camera footage on Owen’s cell phone which allegedly showed both women hitting and kicking all three children, which gave them sufficient cause for their arrests, as reported by 11 Alive.
Warrants for both women allege a history of child abuse, including records from the Georgia Department of Human Services Division of Family & Children Services revealing previous investigations into hall in 2015 and 2017. Hall’s other two children are now in the care of DFCS, per 11 Alive.
According to the warrants, in an incident dating back to July, Owens “walked over to one child and open hand slapped the victim in the front of her face causing her head to whip back quickly.” She also allegedly walked “over to a boy … tightening a cloth around the victim’s eyes then slapping the victim and kicking him on the ground.”
In August, per the arrest warrants, Owens was described as “stomping on another child’s back with her foot and then kicking (her) in the back moving her across the room.”
As for Brittany, the affidavits detailed an incident where “the victim was laying on the floor and the defendant and mother of the victim stood over her and used a belt or cord and whipped the victim on her legs.” Another incident claims Brittany “walked over to the victim and slapped the victim 11 times on the back; the incident was video recorded.”
Gwinnett County District Attorney Patsy Austin-Gatso said, according to the news outlet, “We pray that [Amari’s] sisters are able to heal from the abuse they endured and that their extended family can get a sense of closure.”
Speaking during the sentencing hearing that came immediately following the unanimous verdict, Amari’s grandmother Barbara Wright said, “My heart is broken in millions of pieces that I have not been able to put back together.”
The girls’ aunt, Tacara Wright,” added, “She definitely didn’t deserve that. Respectfully, judge, I hope she burns in hell.”
