A mother of a young woman who was murdered last year said that her daughter would still be alive if the Biden administration’s border policies had not allowed a suspected MS-13 gang member into the United States.
On July 27, 2022, 20-year-old Kayla Hamilton from Aberdeen, Maryland was raped and strangled to death in her bed, according to WMAR Baltimore. Investigators learned that Hamilton was autistic and that she had recently moved to the area with her boyfriend.
DNA evidence collected at the scene led investigators to a 17-year-old boy from El Salvador who entered the United States last March as an “unaccompanied minor.” The suspect, whose name has not been revealed, is listed in El Salvador as a member of Malva Salvatrucha, which is MS-13, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement confirmed to Fox 6 Now.
Now, the 17-year-old has been arrested and charged on six felony charges and five misdemeanors related to Hamilton’s death, including first-degree murder and rape. He will be tried as an adult.
In an interview with The Washington Examiner, Hamilton’s mother, Tammy Nobles, said that the suspect was one of hundreds of thousands unaccompanied children who crossed the border under Biden’s leadership. He was reportedly apprehended in Rio Grande City, Texas but “slipped through the system amid the crisis and went undetected .”
"Everyone should know how he got here — all the people involved that led up to her death, I think they all should be responsible," Nobles said in the interview. “He should have never been allowed in.”
Hamilton was born on July 24, 2022 in Chesapeake, Virginia. She was reportedly diagnosed with autism at age 5. Years later, she dropped out of high school because she wanted to work. Before she died, Hamilon was working for Sephora and was a “top-performing employee.”
"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,” Nobles explained.
“She just wanted to live her life and do her thing and be independent," she continued. "She had a woman’s body and a young girl’s mind.”
The Examiner noted that the suspect had moved into a vacant bedroom in Hamilton’s mobile home with her boyfriend. She came home from an overnight shift at her second job at Weis Markets, a grocery store, and went to sleep as her boyfriend left for his job. When he returned home, he found her deceased in her bedroom. Police said that Hamilton had been strangled with a long phone charging cord.
During the attack, Hamilton had called her boyfriend, which went unanswered and left a voicemail. The voicemail message recorded the attack for two minutes and 30 seconds.
"It was him strangling her," Nobles said
Last month, Nobles met with Aberdeen Police and learned that the suspect in her daughter’s death was a known gang member. She had not heard of MS-13 and had no idea “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."
In an interview with Fox News, Nobles said she hopes the suspect get the “maximum sentence.”
"I feel that he's done this at such a young age, there's no telling what he's capable of as an adult," she said.
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