Decomposed body of 7-year-old found in Georgia closet, cops say. Her mom now charged
The decaying body of a child was discovered in an Atlanta-area apartment, police said.
On June 25, investigators with the DeKalb County Police Department were alerted to a deceased child in Decatur, according to a June 30 news release.
Police received a call from a deactivated cell phone reporting what the caller believed to be a dead child in a closet, according to a police incident report.
An officer arrived at the apartment and spoke with a neighbor who said she had not seen the woman who used to live there for many months after she moved out, according to the report.
One man told outlets he discovered the body but asked to remain anonymous. He told WXIA he was walking by the apartment when he saw the front door wide open and smelled a strong stench.
The man told the outlet the apartment was dark and abandoned.
The man said he went into the apartment, then saw what he believed to be a human arm sticking out of a closet.
Police said they found a juvenile female with “decayed flesh” inside the home, the report said. The officer estimated the age of the child to be between 2 and 4 years old.
Inside the apartment, police found a piece of mail with a woman’s name on it, according to the report.
DeKalb police later identified the body as a 7-year-old child, according to the release, older than her size indicated.
A neighbor told WAGA she remembered the woman who lived in the apartment, but had never seen a child there.
“The child never went out of the apartment. Didn’t go to school. There was nobody to say, ‘Where was this kid?’ And that’s sad,” the neighbor told the outlet.
Four days after the body was discovered, the child’s mother, identified by police as Alondra Hobbs, the name on the mail, was charged with felony murder and cruelty in the second degree, according to the release.
Police did not specify how long they believed the child had been deceased.
Decatur is a suburb of Atlanta, about 6 miles outside the city limits.
