Heavily pregnant, her clothes soaked in blood and a knife in her hand, Sarah Brady stood screaming for help by the roadside.
Sarah, then 26, had just fought off a vicious attack from a deranged woman who had lunged repeatedly at her with a hunting knife, trying to gouge Sarah’s unborn baby from her belly.
“Help me,” Sarah cried out to an approaching vehicle. But its startled driver, an elderly woman, drove on, leaving the bleeding and desperate mother-to-be weeping hysterically on the roadside.
Minutes passed. Her strength ebbing away, Sarah lay by the road sobbing- until, finally, a woman driving a mini-van slowed down.
“To this day I don’t know who the lady was,” Sarah, now 28, recalls. “But I know how much I scared her. I looked horrible. I had blood all over me, I was crying. I screamed, ‘I’ve been attacked! She wanted my baby!'”
Police and ambulance officers were quickly on the scene. Although Sarah’s heartbeat was fading, she was able to blurt out the address of the apartment where a mad, seemingly pregnant woman had attacked her. “She came after me and I stabbed her. She’s pregnant. She’s bleeding,” Sarah gasped, before being whisked to hospital.
Police were soon at Katie Smith’s apartment. Finding the young woman’s unconscious body on the living room floor, they rushed her to the same hospital.
As Sarah lay in bed experiencing the early stages of labour, with her shocked boyfriend Scott at her side, police began firing questions at her. How did she know Katie Smith? Why had Sarah thought Katie was pregnant?
Sobbing, Sarah told them how the 22-year-old woman had telephoned her a few days earlier, claiming her name was Sarah Brody. She said she’d received some packages from a baby store that were really meant for her, Sarah Brady, not Brody.
Sarah, who was only weeks from her due date at that time, happily agreed to go around to the caller’s house that afternoon to collect her parcels. When she arrived at the apartment, the door was opened by an overweight woman who said she was about to give birth, too.
Smith, posing as “Sarah”, gave the real Sarah some of the baby gear she’d been expecting. She also said she was to be induced for delivery later that week.
The next day, Smith called again, saying she had more stuff that had been wrongly sent to her. So, on Thursday, February 10, 2005, Sarah returned to the apartment. But this time there was something about her new friend that made her feel uneasy. After just a few minutes Sarah told the young woman that she had to go.
“You’ve been so nice,” was Smith’s reply. “Can I give you a hug?” As she embraced Sarah, Smith reached into her pocket and pulled out a knife…
For the full story, see this week’s issue of Woman’s Day (on-sale April 16).
Taken from Saving Grace: The True Story Of A Mother-To-Be, A Deranged Attacker And An Unborn Child by Sarah Brady, Patrick Crowley and Eric Deters.
Available online at www.newhorizonpressbooks.com
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