Baby Alexa's Spirit Lives On

AVON PARK - Baby Alexa Hall is gone but her spirit may carry on in the hopes and smiles of three others.

The family of the 3-month-old, who died as the result of shaken baby syndrome Tuesday, has donated the baby's organs to help save the lives of three babies in three far-off cities.

The infant was brought to the Florida Hospital of Sebring's emergency room early Monday after having difficulty breathing. She was flown to the St. Joseph's Hospital Neonatal Intensive Care Unit in Tampa, where doctors determined she had suffered from shaken baby syndrome and was brain-dead. Alexa was taken off of the life support Tuesday after her organs were harvested for transport across the country.

Edgar Otero, 29, of Sebring, was arrested and charged with aggravated battery cruelty toward a child. Additional charges could come following an autopsy in Hillsborough County. Otero was the boyfriend of Brandy Hall, 21, the baby's mother.

Thursday, a shocked family was trying to grieve and hold back tears.

"My granddaughter was a hero," grandmother Sandy Carro managed to say as her voice cracked and she tried to stop her tears.

Three months ago, Aug. 9 to be precise, she had celebrated Alexa's birth, three hours after another granddaughter, Skyla, was born in a Florida Hospital delivery room next door.

Now, she and the family was making funeral arrangements for one, and coping by crystallizing memories of her short life.

"She was perfect," said Carro. "She was tiny. She was a little bitty thing. Her nickname was Peanut."

"Her new thing was she liked keys," said Brandy Hall, who sat at her kitchen table hugging her baby's pink teddy bear. "She used to follow them around (with her eyes)."

"I used to sing to her," said Bill Carro. "I used to sing "Old McDonald" to her."

"Grandpa has a great imagination," Sandy Carro said. "She used to love the animal sounds grandpa made. She was a Red Sox fan."

"She watched the Red Sox win the World Series," said the baby's mother.

"She was so loved," Carro said. "We just want to say that she meant everything to us. She was our life. Our daughter's a great mother."

Lexi's and Skyla's birth had helped to lessen the pain of the passing away of Sandy's mother, Juanita Faye Dobson, the matriarch of the family. Now it has to deal with another death.

While the family didn't like the thought of Alexa being opened up to remove her life-saving organs, they still decided to go ahead with it.

Through a company called LifeLink, Lexi's heart has gone to a 1-month-old baby in Chicago. Her liver, pancreas and intestines have been donated to an 11-month-old child in Pittsburgh and her lungs were sent to St. Louis for a 3-month-old child.

"These babies were all on a waiting list," said Carro. "They were all going to die if they hadn't received the transplants."

Through LifeLink the family will be contacted about the success of each operation, they said.

"Our daughter (Brandy Hall) may have an opportunity to meet the children," Carro added.

"This baby was very strong and we hoped her strength would pull her through this but she never had a chance," she said.

It's going to be a very solemn holiday season in the Carro home.

"We were looking forward to this Christmas holiday with her," Carro said.

Pointing toward a special spot on the wall they had picked out for Alexa, Carro added, "We were getting ready to buy a Christmas stocking for her," she said as her eyes welled with tears.

The weekend before Alexa's death, Carro said she was at the mall and saw the Santa display there. She was going to bring the baby to see him, but thought it would be a better photo with both Alexa and baby Skyla.

Now she wished she had taken her.

Alexa's funeral will be at Fountain Funeral Home, 507 U.S. 27 N., Avon Park, with a viewing from 10 to 11 a.m. and a short service to follow before the burial.

"We thought we'd have our whole life together," Carro said. "We thought she'd be burying us, not us burying her."