A Georgia woman will spend the rest of her life in prison after admitting to killing her 7-year-old disabled daughter and leaving the child’s tiny body to mummify in a closet for months.
On Wednesday morning, Alondra Hobbs, 29, pleaded guilty to one count of malice murder, two counts of felony murder, and two counts of first-degree child cruelty.
After Hobbs pleaded guilty, DeKalb County Superior Court Judge LaTisha Dear Jackson sentenced her to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
“She does not want me to make excuses for what she’s done,” her defense attorney stated during the sentencing hearing. “She doesn’t want a trial.” She wants to take responsibility. “She wants to do something she hasn’t done before.”
In late June 2023, a call from a disconnected cellphone led DeKalb County Police Department officers to the long-dead and mummified body of Alivia Jordan. The girl was found haphazardly in the closet of unit 29 at the Hidden Valley Apartments on Misty Water Drive in Decatur, the county seat and part of the greater Atlanta metro area.
“She looked like a real mummy,” a neighbor told Atlanta-based NBC affiliate WXIA at the time of the horrifying find. “You could tell it was a young girl by what she had on and by her hair.”
Five days later, Hobbs was charged with her daughter’s murder.
According to local jail records reviewed by Law&Crime, a woman named Alondra Denise Hobbs had been in and out of DeKalb County jail several times in recent years. In August 2019, she was arrested for one count of simple assault.
Hobbs was arrested in May 2020 and charged with one count of battery with family violence. In early July 2023, arrest warrants stated that Hobbs left her daughter alone, strapped into a stroller, “with no intention of returning.”
Authorities believe the child was left alone, helpless, to die sometime between February 28 and June 25, 2023.
In the days following the grim discovery, neighbors speculated that the defendant had been depressed for a long time, to the point of contemplating suicide. Meanwhile, family members were shocked by the news, having long assumed the girl was in the care of relatives on her father’s side.
During a subsequent police interview, Hobbs admitted her daughter was alive when she left her in the closet, claiming she abandoned her because her life was “too much.” Alivia was described as autistic by the defendant, and medical records revealed that she suffered from cerebral palsy-related seizures.
“This is an extremely tragic case. “There are always options,” the judge stated at the hearing. “There are very few murder cases that do not involve a physical weapon, and sometimes hands are a physical weapon. And it is difficult. “How do you process that?”
The district attorney’s office stated in court that evidence indicated Hobbs was largely remorseless. When asked if she wanted her daughter to have a funeral, the defendant stated that she didn’t care because no one had ever helped raise her.
Hobbs also stated, “she did what she did to Alivia or she was going to kill herself,” a prosecutor told the judge.
Following the child’s abandonment, the defendant continued to cash her daughter’s $900 monthly disability checks, according to the prosecutor.
Then, after Alivia left, Hobbs began “dating immediately,” which quickly led to her being cheated on, the prosecutor added. That cheating incident, Hobbs later told investigators, was the worst day of her life.
The defendant’s own lawyer argued for — but did not receive — a life sentence with the possibility of parole.
“She wants to atone for what she did,” the defense attorney explained. “And she is looking for some mercy. Even with the tragic facts of this case — which are beyond tragic — a person who confesses, who is remorseful, and who begs for mercy should find some in our system.”
In the end, mercy was not extended.
“Alivia Jordan did not deserve the slow, painful, and lonely death she suffered at the hands of her mother,” DeKalb County District Attorney Sherry Boston said in a press release. “I send my heartfelt condolences to her family, and I hope they find comfort in knowing that Alondra Hobbs is being held accountable for her actions. I want parents to understand that abandoning a child is never the right decision.