Did Miracle Baby's Mother Die Needlessly?

May 16, 2006 — -- Two-year-old Emmanuel Hawkins was born 11 weeks early to a mother who was believed to be brain dead. Not many believed he would come out alive.

"This baby is truly a miracle baby," said Dr. Bridget Cobb, a neonatologist at Dekalb Medical Center, in Decatur, Ga. "I mean, he was as sick as a baby can be, without being dead."

Emmanuel was born to Tara Hawkins, an 18-year-old freshman at Georgia Perimeter College who fell into a coma after an attack. She was injured by Stephen Davis, one of the people her mother helped through a ministry for the homeless. In February 2005, Davis pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter and was sentenced to three years in prison and three years' probation.

Tara was 12 weeks pregnant at the time of the attack, and doctors told her mother, Nonnie Hawkins, that there was little hope for the baby.

"He said there's no way for the baby to survive in her," Hawkins said.

But much to doctors' disbelief, and Hawkins' joy, the baby did grow and was born spontaneously at 28 weeks, but the birth of Hawkins' grandson was tempered by the loss of her daughter two days later.

"Not only was Tara the breath that I breathed, but the beat to my heart," Hawkins said.

A Needless Death?

Today Hawkins cares for Emmanuel. But ABC News learned of a new chapter to this story since first reporting it last year. Hawkins filed a malpractice suit on Monday. The autopsy report said that Tara died because damage to the arteries in her neck had cut off the blood supply to her brain. The lawsuit charges that doctors never checked for such injuries.

"They just gave up on my child," she said.

"Everyone knew she was neurologically impaired," said Hawkins' attorney, John Crongeyer, who is also a doctor. "No one knew why. And that diagnosis wasn't made until four months later on her autopsy. And that is not how doctors are supposed to make diagnoses.