Fredrick Hodge, his face covered with a bandanna, pointed a gun in the face of the 61-year-old Marietta man who came to the door.
“Where is the money?” Hodge said, according to a police warrant. “Give me the money or die.”
Hodge used blue painters’ tape, belts and electrical wires to tie the man’s hands behind his back before the 25-year-old took the man’s debit card. He demanded the man tell him the PIN number, threatening to come back and kill him if it was wrong.
Hodge left him tied up in the home off Windy Hill Road and in a half hour drove the man’s van to use the debit card at nearby Dollar General and Food Depot on Windy Hil. He also tried to pull money from the man’s account at an ATM, said the warrant.
That was just after midnight on Dec. 14, 2014.
Last week, a jury deliberated about an hour before convicting Hodge of armed robbery, hijacking, aggravated assault and other charges, the Cobb County district attorney’s office said in a news release.
Cobb Superior Court Judge Gregory Pool sentenced Hodge, a Marietta man with three felony convictions from New Jersey, to the maximum of life in prison without parole plus 65 years, prosecutors said.
He’s been in Cobb jail nearly 800 days since his arrest, jail records show.
Hodge was recently indicted on a murder charge in a separate case.
Nearly six months after the home invasion, police say Hodge was involved in the killing of Demetrius Towns.
The 32-year-old Towns was found with multiple gunshot wounds on the second-floor breezeway of the Masters Inn on Windy Hill. A warrant in that case said Hodge shot Towns in the chest and right arm. Towns died at the scene.
Hodge and 26-year-old Joseph Cory McCoy were indicted Aug. 3 on a count of malice murder and three counts of felony murder along with other charges in that case.
The next court date for that case was not listed in the court’s database online.
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