(WWJ) A Grand Rapids teen, who found herself at the center of a national controversy that prompted calls for change in how police interact with children, has died from COVID-19.
Family members confirm Honestie Hodges, 14, died at Helen DeVos Children’s Hospital Sunday, 13 days after testing positive for the virus.
The Detroit News reports Honestie was hospitalized on her 14th birthday.
Honestie’s all too short life led to policy changes in how Grand Rapids police are expected to deal with children at crime scenes.
The then 11-year-old was held at gunpoint, handcuffed and put into the back of a police car by Grand Rapids officers outside her home in December 2017.
Her mother and aunt were detained as well.
Police were in the process of searching for another of Honestie’s aunts, a suspect in a stabbing. Honestie was Black. Her aunt was white.
Body cam footage published by WOOD-TV shows Honestie crying and screaming as an officer repeatedly assures her, she is not being arrested.
WZZM reports she was handcuffed for about two minutes and detained in the police cruiser for 10.
An internal investigation found the officers involved did not violate department policy. Therefore, they faced no charges.
MLIVE reports Honestie spoke up at a NAACP conference in the weeks following, saying: "I have a question for the Grand Rapids police: If this happened to a white child, if her mother was screaming, 'She's 11,' would you have handcuffed her and put her in the back of a police car?
She leaves a legacy within the department, the “Honestie Policy.”
The policy demands that officers act in the best interest of the youth and consider: the nature of complaint, the possibility he or she has a weapon, age, intelligence, mental capacity and physical condition, and prior experience with officers, according to WZZM.
Honestie’s grandmother started a GoFundMe page to help the teen's mother with rent and food for her three other children, as she had to leave her job as a nursing home attendant to be by Honestie's hospital bedside.
“She has not left her daughter’s side yet,” Honestie’s grandmother wrote.
In an update on November 14, she said Honestie had to be put on a ventilator.
Over the past week, her grandmother took to the GoFundMe each day to ask for prayers.
“Honestie is a fighter and always has been!” she said.
Honestie’s fight, both to live and to change the world, ended Sunday.
Her grandmother wrote: “It is with an extremely heavy heart that I have to tell all of you that my beautiful, sassy, smart, loving Granddaughter has gone home to be with Jesus.”