Inset, left to right: Jaylon Hobson (Shelby County Sheriff's Office), Sequoia Samuels (Memphis Police Department), Brittney Jackson (Shelby County Sheriff's Office). Background: The area in Tennessee where Hobson and Jackson killed Sequoia (Google Maps).
A Tennessee mother and her boyfriend will both spend decades in prison for falsely reporting the woman's 4-year-old daughter missing when they had actually beaten the little girl to death and hidden her body several weeks earlier.
The sentences were issued after Brittney Jackson and Jaylon Hobson pleaded guilty on Nov. 3 to the murder of Sequoia Samuels, court records show.
Jackson, who pleaded guilty to one count each of second-degree murder, aggravated child abuse and abuse of a corpse, was sentenced to 62 years in a state correctional facility. Hobson pleaded guilty to one count each of solicitation of first-degree murder, filing a false report, abuse of a corpse and tampering with or fabricating evidence. He was sentenced to 22 years in prison.
As Law&Crime previously reported, the couple was initially indicted by a grand jury in 2023 on charges of first-degree murder in connection with Sequoia's death.
Police in Memphis on June 15, 2023, issued a City Watch Endangered Child Alert for Sequoia after Jackson and Hobson reported her missing. Jackson allegedly told investigators that when she woke up that morning at around 7:55 a.m., she found that the front door of her apartment on Caldwell Avenue was open and Sequoia was not inside the house.
Sequoia was about 3 feet tall, weighed 30 pounds and had a feeding tube on the left side of her stomach. She was last seen on a neighbor's video doorbell footage leaving her house and walking on the street alone at approximately 3 a.m. on June 15.
The alert sparked a multiagency search that lasted until the following morning, when police announced they had found a child's remains.
That morning, police announced that a child's remains believed to be Sequoia were recovered inside a dumpster that serviced Jackson and Hobson's apartment complex.
According to a probable cause affidavit, investigators said Sequoia appeared to have died "several weeks" before Jackson and Hobson reported her missing.
Jackson later admitted to making the false report, claiming that Hobson actually "physically attacked" Sequoia multiple times over the course of several weeks until he ultimately beat her to death.
"After the last attack, [Sequoia] became unresponsive. Hobson attempted to revive [Sequoia], however, she never regained consciousness. Jackson never attempted to render aid to her daughter," the affidavit said. "Hobson placed [Sequoia's body] in several garbage bags, and they stored the bags in the house until [June 15, 2023]. Jackson maintained the corpse for several weeks. Jackson advised that [Sequoia] was dumped in the garbage container and moved to the East side of the apartment with the other garbage cans."
Police say Jackson positively identified photographs of the garbage bag and container where they left Sequoia's body.
During the "several weeks" Sequoia's body was kept in the residence, three other children — ages 4, 5 and 6 — were also residing in the home, police said.
Hobson repeatedly denied having any involvement with Sequoia's disappearance or death. He claimed he last saw the girl alive on June 11, 2023, which police said was "impossible due to the advanced state of decomposition of the human remains."