Inset, left to right: Kimora L. Launmei Hodges (Roseville Police Department) and her victim, 23-month-old Kyrie (GoFundMe). Background: The area in Michigan where Hodges lived when she killed the victim (Google Maps).
A 24-year-old woman in Michigan will spend the rest of her life behind bars for killing her friend's 23-month-old toddler while babysitting him, throwing the boy against the wall and causing him to suffer a fatal head injury.
Macomb County Circuit Judge Diane M. Druzinski on Tuesday ordered Kimora Launmei Hodges to serve life without parole in a state correctional facility for the 2022 slaying of young Kyrie Starks, authorities announced.
A jury in July deliberated for just two hours before finding Hodges guilty on one count of felony murder and one count of first-degree child abuse. Specifically, Druzinski sentenced Hodges to life on the murder charge plus an additional 15 to 40 years on the child abuse charge.
Hodges's trial was delayed after her defense team sought to suppress inculpatory statements she made to police during her initial interview, asserting that detectives continued to question her despite her request for an attorney. An appellate court ultimately ruled that one of the statements she made could not be admitted during the trial.
As Law&Crime previously reported, officers with the Roseville Police Department on June 22, 2022, responded to a local hospital after staff reported that a young boy had been admitted with severe head trauma about one week earlier.
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The victim's mother had contacted police several days after picking him up from Hodges's home in the 30000 block of Little Mack Avenue on June 13, 2022. Hodges, whose home is about 16 miles northeast of Detroit, was a neighbor and friend who had been babysitting the child on a semi-regular basis over the previous few months, particularly while the victim's mother went to work.
Hodges had reportedly contacted the mother that evening and said that the victim did not look normal. The mother then rushed to Hodges' home, finding her son in dire straits.
"Once I made it there my baby was on the ground having seizure, after seizure, after seizure," she previously told Detroit Fox affiliate WJBK.
Hodges initially blamed the boy's condition on an "allergic reaction" to "eating soap," the mother wrote on a GoFundMe page for her son. The boy's mother said that she initially believed Hodges was telling the truth about her son having an allergic reaction until the medical staff at the hospital explained the full extent of the boy's physical injuries.
"I believed her until the doctors told me otherwise because i trusted her i feel so betrayed cause i would've done anything for [Hodges] & her daughter," she wrote, noting that Hodges's child was the same age as her son.
"He had blunt force trauma to the head and he was bleeding out his ears and had to have immediate brain surgery," the mother told WJBK. "All I know is she threw my son into the wall and shook him up pretty bad and they said that's just a bit of what she did to him."
Following her arrest, investigators said Hodges admitted to inflicting the fatal injuries on Kyrie.
"That's not what was not supposed to happen," she told detectives during the subsequent interview, per court documents. "You all just want me to blame. You all just want me to say I put my anger on [the victim]. That's not what it is."
Hodges went on to say, "Maybe I hit him too hard, but I didn't take my anger out on him."
The babysitter was initially only facing one count of first-degree child abuse, but after Kyrie died on June 15, 2022, prosecutors charged her with an additional count of felony murder.
"The sentence handed down today reflects the severity of the crime committed," Macomb County Prosecutor Peter J. Lucido said in a statement. "The defendant's actions resulted in the tragic death of an innocent child, and the court has imposed a life sentence without the possibility of parole to hold her fully accountable. Our thoughts remain with the victim's family, whose lives have been forever changed by this senseless act. The justice system has a duty to protect the most vulnerable, and today's sentence underscores that duty."
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