CINCINNATI — Britney Mayes, accused of murdering her 4-year-old daughter in 2016, changed her plea to guilty Monday ahead of her trial.
In July of 2016, 4-year-old Avery Hobbs was found unresponsive in a bathtub in a home on Beech Avenue in West Price Hill. She died at Children's Hospital three days later. The coroner later ruled that the child's death was a homicide by blunt-force trauma to the head.
Mayes pleaded guilty to one count of aggravated murder; in exchange, Mayes will receive a sentence of life in prison.
She was initially indicted by a grand jury in 2016 on one count of aggravated murder, two counts of murder and one count of child endangering. In exchange for her guilty plea to aggravated murder, the additional murder and child-endangering charges were dropped.
Mayes was previously convicted of attempted child endangering in 2012 for head trauma injuries to Avery when the girl was just 6 weeks old. While Mayes served her 6-month sentence, Avery stayed with her grandparents. Her paternal grandmother sought to keep custody of Avery and has said she thought not enough was done to protect her.
