GWINNETT COUNTY, Ga. — A Gwinnett County woman who was found guilty on 21 counts in the murder of an eight-year-old girl in 2021 was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole plus 230 years.
Thursday’s testimony focused on digital evidence to show jurors Celeste Owens’ actions on Nov. 19, 2021. That was a full two days before Amari Hall was reported missing by her mother, Brittany Hall.
Hall called 911 on November 21 to say that they had awakened to find the girl had vanished from the extended-stay motel where she, her three children, and her girlfriend lived. Video of Gwinnett County Police interviewing Owens on the 21st showed her saying that Amari, who she says was diagnosed with autism, might have gotten mad about something and run away.
But on November 19, Owens made--and deleted--a series of cell phone searches including, “What to do when a child just doesn’t listen,” “Lakes near me,” “How does sewers on the streets work,” “Why do kids run away,” “Why is it so hard to find missing people,” and “How do I report someone missing.”
A Gwinnett Police detective testified that security video, Flock cameras, and cell phone location data painted a picture of Owens’s movements. She rented a U-Haul van and drove it between their hotel and the DeKalb County area near where Amari’s body was found dumped in woods close to construction debris.
Det. Randy Blackburn says the mileage in the rented van exactly matched the distance they mapped out between those locations.
Kea Jimenez, the Crime Scene Investigation supervisor with Gwinnett County Police Department described the scene in the Stone Mill Drive area where Amari’s body was found. It was about 11 feet in from the curb and lying in a slight depression in the ground, partially hidden by a fallen tree and the debris.
“She was located with three white-colored trash bags around her body,” testified Jimenez. “She had one that had been slipped over the head, came to an end point around the abdomen. The second was over the legs and stopped short of the hips. There was a third trash bag that was wrapped around her abdomen/torso area near the center and tied with a black-colored rope.”
The day before, courtroom evidence was graphic and gut-wrenching. Jurors on Wednesday saw video after video from Celeste Owens’s own phone of Amari Hall and her younger siblings being physically abused and hit over and over. It was so disturbing, the police corporal on the stand--who confirmed that visible tattoos on the adult out of frame in the clips belonged to Owens--repeatedly cringed, looked away, or closed his eyes to avoid it as his jaw tightened.
Then, Amari’s younger sister, now nine, testified about the last night she’d seen her alive. The girl told jurors Amari had come out of the bathroom and “she had toilet paper in her mouth. The next morning, she wouldn’t wake up.”
She continued, “After that, she got put in a container with a lid on it, and got put in the trunk of a car and drove to the bad kids’ hospital.”
That reference referred to something Owens had told police she did when Amari misbehaved--threatened to take her to the “bad children’s hospital” as in where kids in state custody go. Owens revealed that during her interview because though she denied knowledge of Amari’s whereabouts, police dropped a bombshell by telling her that Amari’s younger sister had told them that the woman she called “Dad” “took her last night and she’s not coming back.”
The State says it has one more witness to call: the medical examiner who will testify Friday. Closing arguments are expected Friday afternoon.
Owens and Brittany Hall, the children’s mother, are indicted on nearly two dozen counts apiece including Malice Murder, Felony Murder, Cruelty to Children in the 1st Degree, and Concealing the Death of Another.
Hall’s trial is still to come.
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