Baby Samaria Sauls: NICU Death in Fort Worth — Missing Organs Allegation & A Family Demanding Answers

0:00 Imagine this. You're a parent standing outside a locked hospital door, listening to the muffled rhythm of machines you don't control, staring at a hallway where people in scrubs move fast but won't say your baby's name. You came to visit like you always do. You came with the kind of hope only parents of premature babies understand, the hope that gets rebuilt every single day in the neonatal intensive care unit, piece by piece, oz by oz, breath by breath. You're already living inside fear, but you've trained yourself to swallow it because your child needs you steady. You need to believe in progress.

0:42 You need to believe in she's getting stronger. You need to believe that the hardest part is behind you. Now imagine a nurse stops you and says you can't go back there because a sterile procedure is happening. Imagine you accept that answer for a moment, because you're trying not to be the difficult parent. You're trying to be respectful. You're trying to trust the people with the badges, the credentials, the keys, and the authority. And then imagine the minute stretching and stretching and stretching. Imagine the moment you start to feel it in your chest, that silent alarm that parents talk about, the one that doesn't come from a monitor. It comes from your gut.

1:25 Imagine you ask again and the answers don't answer. Imagine you realize you're not being updated, you're being managed. Imagine the information only comes when you chase it down. Imagine that you have to fight inside a hospital just to find out what's happening to your own child. Now imagine you finally learn your baby is in distress. Imagine you learn that someone noticed something earlier. Pale skin, a change that didn't look right, and you find out not in real time, but later, after the window for urgency has already closed. Imagine your baby girl dies in a place that was supposed to protect her. Imagine you walk out of that hospital with your arms empty, carrying a grief so heavy it feels physical, like it has weight and temperature and teeth. And now imagine the part that turns grief into horror. Imagine days later, you're at the Funeral Home trying to do the unthinkable final arrangements for your infant, trying to stay upright long enough to make decisions no parent should ever have to make.

2:34 Imagine you think the hospital part is over, and now you can at least lay your baby to rest with dignity. And then imagine you're told your baby arrived without her organs. Imagine you never authorized organ removal beyond whatever you believed you signed for. Imagine you never consented to your child being returned to you incomplete. Imagine, you ask, where are her organs, and the answers sound like silence. Wearing a suit. Imagine that the very last thing you can do for your child, bury her, has been invaded by questions you shouldn't have to ask. And the darkest thought, the thought nobody wants to say out loud, but everybody thinks the second they hear missing organs comes crawling into your mind like smoke.

3:21 If they can take organs from my baby without telling me, what else can they do? Who has access? Who profits? Who decides what a black child's body is worth after her last breath? This is no tears for black girls. I'm Samantha Paul, and today we are telling the story of baby Samaria Sauls and the family demanding answers after her death in a neonatal intensive care unit in Fort Worth, TX. Answers about what happened, answers about what wasn't communicated, and answers about why her body was allegedly sent to the Funeral Home without her organs. This episode is based on public reporting and on family statements shared publicly, including court and advocacy materials tied to their efforts. Where claims are allegations, I will say so. Our focus is simple accountability and bringing attention back to the families whose pain gets minimized the moment the headlines fade.

4:19 Samaria Sauls was one of twin girls. According to the family's GoFundMe fundraiser, the twins were born prematurely on October 23rd, 2025. Their mother, Samaria Bates, and their father, Kenneth Sauls, were told the girls needed time. Time to grow stronger, time to feed, time to gain weight, time to cross the invisible finish line that turns NICU baby into going home baby. The family says the girls did not have major complications beyond being born early. They were in the neonatal intensive care unit at Texas Health Harris Methodist Hospital in Fort Worth, TX 6 weeks is a long time to live inside a hospital schedule. It is a long time to measure love and visits, hand sanitizer, quiet prayers and tiny diapers.

5:14 It is a long time to watch your child fight for basic things most babies do automatically. But it's also a long time to build hope. Because in those weeks you start to plan again. You start to imagine your baby in sunlight instead of fluorescent light. You start to picture the car seat, the crib, the first night home. You start to believe you're going to make it. Then Friday, December 5th, 2025 came. A Fort Worth Star Telegram report, later republished by Yahoo News, describes the family's concerns about what happened that day. According to that reporting, Kenneth Sauls went for his daily visit to see his daughters. A nurse stopped him from entering, saying a sterile procedure was occurring.

6:03 The family says communication that day was not clear, not timely and not compassionate, that they had to fight for information and that they weren't kept informed the way parents should be in a medical emergency involving their child. The reporting states Samaria died at about 7:30 in the evening. The family says the hospital told them the cause was necrotizing enterocolitis, often shortened to NECA, life threatening illness in newborns that involves severe inflammation and injury to the intestines. NEC is real, it is serious, and it is terrifying, especially for premature infants.

6:45 But what families want to know in cases like this is not just the name of a condition. They want the timeline. They want to know when the first signs were noticed. They want to know when doctors were notified. They want to know what interventions were attempted and when. They want to know whether urgency matched the moment. And that is where the family's questions sharpen. Because on social media and in a message shared publicly that we were asked to amplify, Samaria's aunt describes a sequence that has haunted the family. A visit around noon, a baby described as pale, and allegations that the baby appeared pale much earlier in the morning. In the family's view, that gap between what was seen and when action was taken is not a minor detail. It is the difference between a chance and a tragedy. Now I want to pause here and be clear about something. When a baby dies, families often receive partial answers, clinical phrases, and closed doors. Hospitals cite privacy.

7:48 Staff close ranks. Parents are left with fragments. And in that vacuum, every unanswered question becomes a wound that won't close. But even with that being true, nothing prepares a family for what came next. The family consented to an autopsy. And here is where the story splits into two realities that can both be true at the same time. Reality #1 Autopsies, by definition involve the removal of organs for examination. That is standard medical practice. In the Star Telegram reporting, Doctor Reed Quinton, the president of the National Association of Medical Examiners, is quoted explaining that autopsies always involve organ removal and that organs can be retained for further studies or released with the body depending on the consent. Reality #2 Families can still be blindsided by what that means in practice, especially if the consent process was unclear, rushed, poorly explained, or if they did not understand that autopsy might include the hospital retaining organs afterward.

8:59 Families can feel violated when they receive a body they believe is incomplete, especially when they say they never authorized retention, never received a clear explanation, and never received a transparent inventory of what was taken, what was kept and why. According to the Star, Telegram and Yahoo News reporting, Kenneth Sauls said he consented to a hospital autopsy after his daughter's death, but he was not informed that the organs would be retained. The reporting also states that the president of Texas Health Harris Methodist Hospital, Fort Worth, called him and told him the hospital still had the baby's organs.

9:39 The hospital declined to comment publicly on the situation, citing patient privacy laws. The Funeral Home referenced in the reporting also declined to comment. And this is the moment where a family's grief collides with a fear that many Black families know too well. The fear that institutions believe they can do things to our bodies and our children's bodies that they would never do to someone else without explanation, without transparency, and without consequence. When a family says our baby came back without her organs, people immediately jumped to one word. Harvesting, body harvesting, organ harvesting, trafficking of the dead.

10:22 Let me be careful. We do not have evidence that Samaria Sauls was a victim of organ trafficking. We do not have evidence that a criminal enterprise harvested her organs. What we do have is a family saying they did not authorize what happened, they did not understand what they were consenting to, and they were not given clear answers. And we have public reporting acknowledging the organs were retained and that the hospital president told the father the hospital still had them. But here is why the harvesting fear spread so fast, especially in Black communities. Because history taught us to be suspicious. Black bodies have been exploited in the name of medicine, research, and education since the earliest days of American Medical training, Grave robbing, unconsented experimentation, disrespect, and death.

11:15 Even when the intent wasn't profit, the reality was the same. A system that did not treat black life and black dignity as fully human. And even in modern America, families are still alleging that organs were removed or retained without proper consent in other contexts. In April of 2024, CNN reported on lawsuits from families of deceased Alabama inmates alleging their loved ones bodies were returned without major organs and that families were not asked for consent to retain those organs. That is a separate situation. Different people, different systems.

11:56 But it shows why families don't easily accept Trust Us as an answer anymore. When you've seen other families say the same thing, your mind goes to the worst possibility immediately because the worst possibility has happened to somebody, somewhere before. So what does a family do when they feel like something is wrong and the institution that holds the answers closes its mouth? They document. They organize. They get loud. The GoFundMe fundraiser for this family is titled Justice for Samaria. Help us Find Answers, organized by Savia Johnson on behalf of Samaria Bates and Kenneth Saul's.

12:37 In the fundraiser, the family says Samaria's grandfather arrived to visit the twins around midday on December 5th and was denied access because of a sterile procedure. And they describe concerns about a nurse noticing Samaria looked pale earlier that morning. With delays in reporting and notification. The family says they have not been given a clear explanation of what went wrong. They describe attempts to meet with hospital staff and leadership that they say were unsuccessful. They are raising funds to pursue answers and accountability and to prevent other families from experiencing the same kind of silence. Now I want to do what the family asked us to do. Samaria's grandmother contacted us directly and asked us to help get the word out about their efforts, including a March happening later this month and a message she shared asking people to pray for her family.

13:29 We are not a major network. We are not backed by billion dollar sponsors, but we are loud where it counts and we are consistent. And when a family asks us to help, we do what we can to get the story out. Here is the message posted by Samaria's aunt. I am going to read it exactly as it appears. Please pray for my family. On October 23rd 2025 my sister gave birth to identical twins girls and the girls were small so they were to stay in the NICU until they reached a certain weight. No health conditions at all. On December 5th, 2025, my mom went to visit the twins around noon and noticed 1 was pale, still laying in the incubator and that she was not breathing. Then was notified by a NICU nurse that this was normal and the baby had been noticeably pale allegedly since 8:00 AM. By the time my mother seen her around noon, she had already been in this state for hours and already changing colors. Deceased on December 12th, 2025.

14:39 We arrived at the Funeral Home to make final arrangements and discovered that my niece arrived at the Funeral Home without her organs. Consent was never given to the hospital to keep her organs. We were also told that the baby did not come from the medical examiner, but directly from the hospital. Hospitals supposedly performed their own private autopsy. The doctor we need to speak with is now on vacation so we have no access to him until he comes back. We still haven't received a call from the hospital stating what exactly happened to our sweet innocent baby who was supposed to come home this month. Please keep my sister in your prayers.

15:21 This happened at Texas Health Harris Methodist downtown Fort Worth, TX. As of now, we know of two people before us that this has happened to and one other family while we were visiting. The other twin. That is the family speaking in real time in raw grief, trying to make sense of something that feels senseless. Now let's talk about the March. The family and supporters are organizing a peaceful walk in remembrance of Baby Samaria Sauls, the flyer reads. Please join us in remembrance of Baby Samaria Sauls. It describes it as a peaceful, united walk and invites families, friends, supporters and advocates to attend and to bring signs if able.

16:07 The walk is scheduled for Saturday, February 21st, 2026. 2:00 PM is the meet up time. 2:30 PM is when the walk begins. The location listed is 910 5th Ave. Fort Worth, TX 76104. If you are in Texas, if you are in driving distance, if you are someone who believes parents should never have to beg for answers about their baby, show up not for spectacle, for pressure, for solidarity, for the kind of presence that tells a grieving family you are not alone. Now, for those who want to support financially, the family has a GoFundMe.

16:52 The fundraiser is titled Justice for Samaria. Help us find answers. The organizer listed is Savia Johnson. The easiest way to find it is to go to gofundme.com and search the title Justice for Samaria. Help us find Answers. Now let's talk about what families can do in situations like this. Because the truth is many listeners are hearing this and thinking, what would I do if that was my child? First, if your child is in a hospital, especially in intensive care, keep a written log. Dates, times, names, what was said, what wasn't said.

17:35 Ask for names and spellings. Ask for titles. If someone refuses to give you their name, write that down to ask for the charge nurse. Ask for the attending physician, ask for the patient advocate. If you feel dismissed, ask again and ask louder and bring someone with you if you can. Second, if the worst happens and a death occurs and you are asked to consent to an autopsy, slow it down. Ask for the consent form in writing. Ask someone to explain it line by line. Ask specifically, will any organs be retained. Ask if organs will be returned to the body.

18:16 Ask where the body goes next. Ask who transports the body. Ask if the medical examiner is involved. Ask what private autopsy means in that hospital's language. Ask for a copy of everything you sign before you leave the building. Third, request records immediately. Medical records, Nursing notes, the timeline of events, lab results, imaging, medication administration records, the Code Blue record if there was one. Hospitals can delay, but paper trails don't disappear if you request them fast and repeatedly. If you can, speak with an attorney who understands medical negligence and hospital records. 4th, if you are told organs were retained, demand an itemized list.

19:03 What organs? Why? Where are they stored? Under what authority? For how long? Who has chain of custody? Ask what policy governs retention. Ask what state law applies. Ask how and when the organs can be released. Ask what tests are pending. And ask for those answers in writing. Because here is the truth. Some of what families experience is not always criminal. Sometimes it is bureaucratic. Sometimes it is policy. Sometimes it is poor communication. Sometimes it is arrogance. But even when it isn't criminal, it can still be wrong. Because families deserve informed consent, not surprise.

19:48 They deserve dignity, not confusion. They deserve compassion, not corporate silence. And when the families are black, we have to say the part that the polite version avoids. Black families are often treated like they are overreacting until they are burying someone. Black pain is often minimized until it becomes unignorable, and Black grief is often met with procedure instead of humanity. That is why we keep telling these stories because the moment you stop telling them, institutions learn they can wait you out. In the closing moments, I want to connect this story to the bigger pattern because Samaria's case is not happening in isolation. We have seen lawsuits and allegations in other places where families say their loved ones bodies were returned without organs and without meaningful consent. In Alabama, families of inmates alleged organs were removed and retained without consent, according to CNN reporting from April of 2024.

20:55 Different context, but the same core wound families saying they were not informed, not respected and not treated like next of kin with rights. And in Texas years earlier, there were news reports of families alleging children's organs were harvested without permission. These stories spread because the fear is not irrational. The fear is built on lived experience systems that do not always see Black families as partners in care, but as obstacles to manage. So here's the message to families listening. Ask questions like your child's life depends on it, because it does.

21:35 Bring a notebook. Bring a witness. Take names, request records. Don't be intimidated by a building full of authority. Hospitals are not gods. They are institutions. And institutions can be wrong. And here's the message to hospitals and administrators listening. If your policies are ethical, then transparency should be easy. If your care is compassionate, then communication should be constant. If a baby dies and a family has to organize a March just to be heard, you are not delivering care. You are delivering trauma. Now, before we go into our closing announcements, I want to say this clearly. Our hearts are with Samaria Bates, Kenneth Saul's, their surviving twin, and the entire family. And to Samaria's aunt, who reached out to us directly, thank you for trusting us with your family's story. We are doing what we can to get it out. If you want to support the family again, search GoFundMe for Justice for Samaria.

22:39 Help us find answers. Organized by Savia Johnson and if you can show up in person, The Peaceful Walk is Saturday, February 21st, 2026. Meet up at 2:00 PM. Walk begins at 2:30 PM at 910 5th Ave. Fort Worth, TX 76104. Now if you love our podcast and want to support this show, there are several ways you can help us keep bringing these stories to light. You can subscribe directly through Spotify via the link in the show notes. You can give us a positive rating and a five star review on any platform where you're listening to this podcast because every positive review helps us reach more listeners and helps more people hear the stories mainstream media ignores.

23:28 You can also check out stories from our No Tears for Black Girls book series by JC Reedberg on Amazon. You can download with a Kindle Unlimited subscription or purchase directly in digital or print. You can download the entire series or choose the book that catches your eye. Either way, the very little you can do can go a long way. Our books release monthly on an ongoing basis. Right now our series is at book #8 with the recent release of Dubai Nights, which is a story that takes place when Destiny Clark thinks she finally caught her break. A luxury modeling contract in Dubai, all expenses paid. A chance to escape her suffocating student debt and help her struggling family.

24:16 The photos show Infinity pools, designer clothes and the life she's always deserved. But the messages stop coming. Her little sister Jamila knows something is wrong. The tracker goes dark. The consulate won't help. The police don't care about another missing black girl chasing fame overseas. So Jamila does what the system won't. She becomes the bait. Armed with a fake identity and a wire, she infiltrates the same modeling agency that lured destiny away. What she uncovers is a sophisticated trafficking network that preys on young black women desperate for opportunity, and a conspiracy that reaches far beyond Dubai's glittering skyline. But going undercover means becoming prey. And in a world where black girls disappear without a trace, Jamila might be walking into a trap she can't escape. A visceral thriller about the girls no one looks for, the sisters who refuse to give up, and the price of being seen in a world that wants you invisible.

25:19 Perfect for readers of Tammy Hogue, Karen Slaughter, and Stacey Willingham, who crave diverse voices and unflinching truths. Besides purchasing any of our books from the No Tears for Black Girls series on Amazon Kindle, you can also support us by streaming the soundtrack to our stories. By searching No Tears for Black Girls soundtrack on any music platform, you can also support our solo recording artist Jada Truth, whose stage name was inspired from the main character in our book Dead Mike, the 7th book in the No Tears for Black Girls series. Search the name Jada Truth on your favorite music platform or follow links to her page from our music streaming profiles to stay connected with Jada. She also goes by Jada Truth Music on all major social media platforms.

26:08 And if you love this podcast, you can support us by giving us a like a follow and a five star review. Every positive review helps us reach more listeners and helps more people hear the stories mainstream media ignores. This is Samantha Paul for No Tears for Black Girls the cases they ignored. Stay loved, stay blessed, stay safe. And remember, whenever you're trapped in a World of Darkness, never allow fear to overwhelm you. Just believe in your inner spirit and remind yourself of God's first words. Let there be light.