Man Pleads Guilty to One-Year-Old’s 2020 Death

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Nearly four years after a one-year-old girl was killed, her godbrother pleaded guilty to the abuse that ended her life in Baltimore City Circuit Court Aug. 19.

Paul Dion Hardy Jr., 35, was charged with second-degree murder, first-degree child abuse resulting in the death of a child under 13, first-degree child abuse resulting in severe physical injury, second-degree child abuse by a custodian, first-degree assault, second-degree assault and reckless endangerment for the murder of Zariea Dixon in October 2020.

Hardy agreed to the prosecution’s plea offer of 15 years, suspending all but five years, with four years of supervised probation. After two years of successful probation, the prosecution will consider a motion to modify Hardy’s sentence. Hardy will also receive a little over three years of credit for time served since June 17, 2021. Judge Melissa M. Phinn accepted Hardy’s plea and found him guilty.

Dixon’s mother told Hardy to “please keep looking forward,” and that she still loved him.

According to the prosecutor, Hardy’s sentencing guidelines recommended between two and seven years of incarceration, which the plea offer fulfilled. The maximum sentence Hardy could have received for second-degree child abuse was 15 years.

The prosecutor advised that Dixon suffered among other injuries, hemorrhages in her brain and eyes and an acute subdural hematoma. Medical examiners ruled her death a homicide by head and neck injuries.

Defense attorney Augustine Okeke announced his intention to later move Hardy’s probation to North Carolina, where his client anticipates living after release.

Charging documents state Dixon was taken off life support and pronounced dead on Oct. 11, 2020, after becoming brain dead three days after being admitted to the hospital. Hardy was watching Dixon and her six-year-old sister at their home on the 600 block of Mosher Street while their mother was at work. During an interview with Baltimore Police Department investigators, Hardy claimed Dixon’s injuries were from him falling down the steps while carrying her to get help and banging her head down too forcefully to perform CPR.