A woman accused of killing her girlfriend’s 8-year-old girl was convicted of murder and 19 other charges Friday afternoon in Gwinnett County.
The jury took less than two hours to convict Celeste Owens of killing Nicole Amari Hall in November 2021. Judge Angela Duncan then sentenced Owens to life in prison without the possibility of parole, plus 235 years. Duncan called the crimes “the most heinous evil that I have ever seen” in her career.
“You will never see the light of day to perpetrate this type of behavior and cruelty and evilness upon another person,” Duncan said.
Owens did not testify in her defense before jurors began deliberating Friday afternoon. She didn’t speak during her sentencing either and sat motionless while her fate was read aloud.
Credit: Gwinnett County Sheriff's Office
Credit: Gwinnett County Sheriff's Office
Prosecutors told the court Owens abused not just Amari, but her girlfriend’s two other children.
“This defendant was directly abusing not just Amari but all of the children,” Sabrina Nizam, deputy chief assistant district attorney, said during closing arguments. “The defendant helped beat the living life out of Amari.”
Owens’ defense attorney, Robert Greenwald, said there was no evidence that Owens killed the child.
The jury convicted Owens on four counts of murder, concealing the death of another, aggravated assault, aggravated battery, making false statements and several counts of first-degree cruelty to children.
The trial was the first of two related to the girl’s death, who was reported missing by her mother. Brittany Nicole Hall’s trial is still pending.
Barbara Wright, the children’s grandmother, addressed the jury during Friday’s sentencing. Wright, who is Brittany Hall’s mother, has custody of her two other grandchildren, along with her husband.
“My heart is broken in millions and millions of pieces,” Wright said. “My heart is empty. I miss Amari so much.”
Brittany Hall told police Amari was missing from the Gwinnett hotel where the family had been living. The little girl, who wore glasses, was last seen in her Tweety Bird jacket and blue and white pajamas, her mother said.
But investigators soon believed the girl was never missing.
Two days later, Amari’s body was found in a wooded area of a DeKalb County neighborhood about 15 miles from the HomeTowne Studios at 7049 Jimmy Carter Boulevard, Gwinnett police Chief J.D. McClure said at the time. Brittany Hall and her three children were staying there with Owens.
By the time the girl’s body was found, both Hall and Owens were in custody. Their charges were later upgraded to murder.
“My heart goes out to the extended family of Amari Hall,” McClure said after Amari was found. “We worked diligently on this case. The investigators, from our uniform patrol officers who went out and searched the area, we worked extremely hard, and unfortunately, these are not the results we had hoped for.”
Brittany Hall and her children had previously lived with her parents, Wright testified. But Hall had moved out and didn’t tell Wright where they were living.
During the trial, jurors saw cellphone videos of Owens abusing the three children. A Gwinnett investigator appeared to hold back tears as the videos were shown in court.
Arrest warrants indicated Amari’s death was caused by multiple blows to the head and that Brittany Hall waited nearly two days to report her daughter as missing. Investigators previously said they believed Owens hit the girl, then after her death, placed her body in a trash bag and abandoned it.
A doctor testified that Amari died from blunt force trauma and battered child syndrome.
Zaire Hall, now 9, testified that one morning, her mother and Owens couldn’t wake up her sister.
“She got put in a container with a lid and put in the trunk of a car,” Zaire testified. “They took her to the ‘bad kids’ hospital.”
Testimony explained that the “bad kids hospital” was used as a scare tactic against the children.
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