In 1986, Leonard Hall of New York City got into a brawl with a man in a store at the corner of 127th Street and Lenox Avenue. Unsatisfied with the outcome, he left to fetch his pistol and ambushed the man outside a pool hall. Like many criminals, Hall was a terrible shot, and his fusillade missed his intended victim entirely. He did manage to shoot — twice — Brigette Garrett, who was on her way to Sylvia’s, the famous Harlem restaurant. Garrett was nearly eight months pregnant, and the bullet that passed through her abdomen destroyed her placenta, some of which was visibly hanging out of the exit wound when doctors began performing an emergency Caesarean-section delivery of her daughter, Atallia.
Atallia was born with a weak heartbeat and breathing problems. Beyond the usual difficulties associated with premature birth, she had suffered oxygen deprivation as a result of the destruction of the placenta. But there was some cause for hope: She was two pounds five ounces at birth, and the vast majority of premature children born at that weight survive. Her medical condition was upgraded by physicians as her circulatory and respiratory systems began to recover. She was moving her arms and legs. And then her condition suddenly deteriorated, as a result of hyaline membrane disease, which was also caused by the destruction of the placenta by Hall’s bullet. Atallia died 36 hours after birth.
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