Honestie Hodges, girl who was held at gunpoint by police in 2017, dies of coronavirus

Honestie Hodges, the girl who was at the center of a Grand Rapids, MI police controversy three years ago has died after a two-week battle with COVID, her family confirmed.

“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,” Hodges grandmother Alisha Niemeyer wrote in an update Sunday, Nov. 22 on a GoFundMe page.

Honestie Hodges battle with COVID

Speaking to a local outlet, Honestie Hodges grandmother said Honestie was “healthy” and “happy.” and had no underlying health problems.

“It just went down from there, like incredibly quickly,” Niemeyer told News 8 Monday. “There was no way we thought this was ever going to happen. You know (we thought), ‘She is going to get better; she is going to come home and we are going to have a birthday party.’”

According to the GoFundMe page, Honestie, 14, went to DeVos Children’s Hospital on her birthday (Nov. 9) for stomach pains and tested positive for COVID-19. She was sent home but later the same day became more ill.

She went back to the hospital in an ambulance.

The grandmother, in subsequent written updates, said Honestie was placed on a ventilator on Nov. 14.

“By the time I saw my granddaughter, she wasn’t communicating in any way,” she said.

“Honestie was admitted to the intensive care unit. She was immediately given an iron transfusion, a blood transfusion, put on oxygen and later placed on a ventilator. Less than two weeks after her diagnosis, she was gone.”, said Niemeyer.

Police Encounter Leads To Law

In December 2017, a then 11-year-old Honestie Hodges made headlines when she was handcuffed at gunpoint by officers and placed in a cruiser as they searched for a suspect in an attempted murder.

Hodges, her mother and another relative were just leaving their Grand Rapids home when they encountered police looking for one of their relatives in a stabbing.

Her brief detainment led to written policy changes in how Grand Rapids police interact with children at scenes. The changes were monikered the “Honestie policy.”

The family has set up a GoFundMe to help with expenses.