EXCLUSIVE — The heartbroken mother of a young
Maryland
woman who was murdered in her bed last summer said her daughter would still be alive had it not been for weak
border
enforcement that let a suspected
MS-13
gang member into the United States.
Tammy Nobles of Norfolk, Virginia, learned this month that the person
arrested and charged
two weeks ago on six felony charges and five misdemeanors related to the strangling death of her
autistic
20-year-old daughter was a citizen of
El Salvador
who had illegally entered the country at the southern border last March and identified as an
unaccompanied minor
.
On Tuesday, the unnamed suspect, whose identity is protected as a 17-year-old, was indicted by a grand jury in Maryland for 11 charges in the July 27, 2022, homicide of Kayla Hamilton, including first-degree murder, robbery, and
rape
. He will be tried as an adult.
“Everyone should know how he got here — all the people involved that led up to her death, I think they all should be responsible,” said Nobles in her first at-length interview about the loss of her eldest daughter. “She was just a happy little girl that wanted to live life, and it was taken. She wasn’t doing anything. She had two jobs. She was trying to figure out life being autistic.”
TEENAGE MS-13 GANG MEMBER CHARGED IN RAPE AND MURDER OF AUTISTIC WOMAN TO BE TRIED AS ADULT
The suspect illegally crossed the U.S.-Mexico border and was apprehended by federal Border Patrol agents in Rio Grande City, Texas, in March 2022, Nobles said and an Aberdeen Police spokeswoman confirmed. It is unclear if he was in a gang at the time, whether he was on the radar of federal authorities, or if a background screening was done when he entered the U.S. The Aberdeen Police Department confirmed the suspect’s MS-13 affiliation to the Washington Examiner.
The suspect was one of
300,000 unaccompanied children
who crossed the southern border during President Joe Biden’s two years in office following the Department of Homeland Security’s
decision to reverse
a
pandemic policy
that preceded the country’s
largest-ever surge
of minors to the U.S. The influx has
put an enormous strain
on border officials, who have been pushed to process and transfer children to the Department of Health and Human Services, in which a social worker
will find a sponsor
in the U.S. to release the child as quickly as possible.
In Nobles’s case, the suspect slipped through the system amid the crisis and went undetected until he allegedly committed the
crime
.
“He should have never been allowed in,” Nobles said.
Police in the 16,000-person town of Aberdeen, Maryland, only discovered in recent weeks that the suspect in Hamilton’s murder was known by the Salvadoran government as a member of
MS-13
, one of the vilest transnational criminal organizations in the world. Mara Salvatrucha, the gang’s full name, has
existed
since the 1970s, and its members are
arrested almost daily
trying to enter the U.S. from Mexico illegally.
The suspect’s MS-13 connection helped cement local police’s push to obtain an arrest warrant, but it has led Nobles to ask bigger questions over how he was allowed into the country and whether the information exchange among federal agencies fell apart.
‘She just wanted to live her life’
Hamilton was born on July 24, 2002, in Chesapeake, Virginia. Nobles raised her daughter as a single mother and later wed her now-husband, who became Hamilton’s stepfather. Hamilton had an older brother and a younger sister.
Hamilton was diagnosed with autism and ADHD at 5. She had attended school but dropped out in high school because she wanted to get a job.
“She just wanted to live her life and do her thing and be independent,” Nobles said. “She had a woman’s body and a young girl’s mind.”
In August 2021, the 19-year-old and her boyfriend moved from Norfolk, Virginia, to Aberdeen. Hamilton landed a job at the makeup store Sephora’s warehouse. Hamilton was a top-performing employee, her mother said. She also worked overnight at Weis Markets, a grocery-store chain.
Hamilton and her boyfriend rented a room in a three-bedroom mobile home in a park called “Rancho” in Aberdeen. The couple had been living in Aberdeen for nearly a year when she turned 20 years old on July 24, 2022, three days before she was killed.
Voicemail recorded deadly encounter
Approximately two days before her birthday, the suspect moved into the vacant third bedroom of their shared mobile home, according to police.
On July 27, Hamilton came home from an overnight shift at work and went to sleep in her bedroom as her boyfriend left for work.
Early that evening, Hamilton’s boyfriend returned home and entered the bedroom, where he found her deceased. He called the police, who arrived on the scene and called Hamilton’s mother within minutes. Police told Nobles that the injuries Hamilton had sustained were consistent with homicide.
Hamilton had been strangled to death with a long phone charging cord wound around her neck, according to police.
She had called her boyfriend at the time of the incident, and the call went unanswered and to voicemail, Nobles and police said. The phone kept recording the voicemail as Hamilton was attacked.
“It was him strangling her,” Nobles said. “Two minutes and 30 seconds.”
Video footage captured images of the suspect on the property before the attack, according to Aberdeen Police. Officials brought in the housemates for questioning, including the new roommate, but did not have enough evidence at the time to hold him.
From the Mexico border to Small Town, USA
Over the next five months, Nobles waited for answers from the
police
.
Aberdeen Police contacted her on Jan. 15 and said they had arrested a male from El Salvador who was an illegal immigrant and believed to be 17 years old.
Nobles met in person with Aberdeen Police on Jan. 25. Police said the suspect was a known MS-13 gang member. Nobles, a real estate agent, said she “had no idea what MS-13 was,” how he could have entered the country, or “how he ended up being in the same trailer” as her daughter.
“The suspect was arrested at the border in Rio Grande City, Texas,” Nobles said police told her. “We do not know if his background was checked or not.”
U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which oversees the Border Patrol, did not disclose in a statement provided to the Washington Examiner Tuesday evening if it had screened the suspect at the border or what type of screening he went through.
“CBP screens migrants utilizing a range of criteria and methods that are law enforcement sensitive,” according to a statement from CBP. “Methods for assessing the validity of migrants’ age include the collection of biometric and biographic information such as fingerprints, photos, phone numbers, addresses, and documentation provided by migrants or government agencies. Identification and age determination are also determined through background investigations, agent interviews, and consulate verification.”
After he was apprehended at the border in March, he identified a woman in Frederick, Maryland, as his aunt, police said.
Unaccompanied minors are turned over from Border Patrol to HHS for approximately one month while they await placements nationwide. Although Immigration and Customs Enforcement confirmed the suspect’s gang affiliation to Aberdeen Police, ICE likely played no role in processing or holding him — only Border Patrol and HHS would have.
The HHS did not respond to a request for comment.
The suspect went to live with his aunt and then moved in with a half-brother in Aberdeen, the charging documents stated.
Nobles said the suspect’s half-brother had connected him with a woman who sublet rooms within the park’s mobile homes. She rented the third room in Hamilton’s trailer to the suspect.
As the clues continued to come together, police obtained a warrant for his arrest and took him into custody at a foster home earlier this month.
The aftermath of tragedy
Six months have passed since Hamilton’s death, and still, Nobles has not been able to return to a state of normalcy, often unable to sleep or work.
“Losing a child is bad enough, but losing her to murder is on a whole new level,” she said. “I am just mentally, physically, and emotionally exhausted. I cannot focus on anything else but her. I’m just consumed with it,” she said. “I wouldn’t want any other parents to go through what I’m going through, and that’s why I want to get her story out.”
“Maryland doesn’t have the death penalty, but we want him to serve life without parole,” she continued. “He should never be allowed out because if he is 17, and he’s done this at such a young age, there’s no telling what he would be capable of as an adult.”
Nobles will meet with the state attorney next week to discuss a possible plea deal. Nobles said the Aberdeen Police Department, including the detective and officers, could not have been more supportive and invested in her daughter’s case.
“It just makes me so angry that this could have been prevented,” said Nobles. “[My daughter’s] having autism just adds to the cruelness of her case. The people that are for illegal immigrants would say that he was at a disadvantage being an illegal immigrant. And I’m like, ‘Well, so was she because she had autism. She wasn’t typical. She had autism. She had high-functioning autism. She’s at a disadvantage to society, too.'”
Nobles had planned to visit her daughter over Labor Day weekend last year. Her last written message to Hamilton celebrated the beautiful woman she was becoming on her 20th birthday.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
“Thank you, Mommy,” Nobles said Hamilton had responded.
“She’s safe with the Lord now. She’s free,” said Nobles.
