Overview
- Veronica Deramous met pregnant Teka Adams at a Washington homeless shelter and lured her to a home where she attacked her with a box cutter in an attempt to take the unborn child.
- Adams escaped while holding her lacerated abdomen and underwent an emergency C-section on December 6, 2009, delivering a daughter she named Miracle.
- Police arrested Deramous the same day, and she was charged, including with attempted murder, according to contemporaneous reports.
- In 2010, Judge C. Philip Nichols Jr. accepted a guilty plea to first-degree assault and an Alford plea to false imprisonment, imposing 25 years for assault and a life sentence with all but 15 years suspended.
- Prosecutors said Deramous fabricated stories about a prior arrangement to buy the baby, a claim she made in court that the state rejected.