ROBERTSDALE, Alabama — The death of a child is something no parent should ever have to face.

For Foley native and Robertsdale resident Donna Crooks Atkins, her son Justin’s death at the age of 17 has sparked a nearly nine-year ordeal.

It was an ordeal that began in March of 2007 when Justin woke up complaining of chest pains that radiated to the back of his head and neck, which worsened with deep breaths.

Atkins said she rushed Justin to the hospital, where they sat in the ER waiting room for hours waiting to be seen. They were only seen, she said, when someone who worked at the hospital happened by, asked what they were doing there and quickly got them back to the doctor on call.

Once there, Atkins said, Justin was examined, hooked to an EKG machine, and quickly diagnosed with chest wall pain or muscle pain. He was given a double dose (for an adult) of pain medicine and they were sent home.

Eleven days later, Atkins said, Justin left the house early with friends on a Sunday morning. She would leave some time later to go to church. After church, she says, she went grocery shopping and received a call from Justin.

Her husband and another son had also left the house and Justin was home alone. He was calling to find out when she would be home.

“He was a teenage boy,” she said. “What can I say, he wanted to know when I’d have dinner ready.”

But in the middle of their conversation, Atkins said, Justin suddenly uttered an expletive and the connection between them was abruptly lost.

“I didn’t think anything of it,” she said. “I just thought he dropped the phone or something and we lost the connection.”

By the time she returned home, her husband and younger son had also returned home, but she didn’t see Justin at first.

Her younger son found Justin in another room.

“He (the younger son) came running in the room and said there was something wrong with Justin,” she said.

They ran to find Justin slumped over in a chair.

“He always had the prettiest red lips. He had lips that most women would be envious of,” said Atkins. But when she looked at his lips that day, her heart sank. His lips were completely blue.

They called 9-1-1 and Justin was rushed to a different hospital, but it was too late. He was pronounced dead on arrival.

“The hospital told us that they provided a ‘standard of care,’ for someone coming into the emergency room,” Atkins said, but she believes the doctors and the hospital did not perform basic tests, such as  a CT or an MRI, which could have led to a proper diagnosis.

Atkins and Justin’s family filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the hospital and the ER doctor who treated Justin and an autopsy and toxicology analysis were performed by the Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences laboratory in Mobile.

It took over six months to get the results of the tests. Toxicology tests showed what Atkins said she already knew, that there were no illegal drugs in Justin’s system.

The autopsy showed that Justin died as a result of a ruptured aortic dissection in his heart, the kind that usually result from connective tissue disorders such as Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, a genetic disorder, although Justin showed no other signs of the disease.

It took another six years for the case to come to trial. In November of 2012, the case was ready to be heard in front of a jury, but the family asked that it be delayed, so it would be September of 2013 before the case would come before the court.

Eight days of testimony followed and within 45 minutes of closing, the jury returned its verdict, in favor of the hospital and doctor.

“They said that since the doctor had been fired and was no longer practicing in Alabama, they felt that he had been punished enough,” Atkins said.

They quickly filed an appeal, but the ruling was upheld. Atkins said she was told it was because her attorneys had not objected when the verdict was read.

It was a devastating blow for Atkins and her family, but it was two things that came up during the process of the trial that has Atkins actively seeking reforms she says were not available for in her son’s case.

The first, she says is something the judge said in charging the jury before the verdict was handed down. Something she says she will never forget.

“He said, “as far as the state of Alabama is concerned, Justin Crooks’ life has no value,’” she said, “and they are right.”

In the state of Alabama, when seeking damages in a wrongful death lawsuit, families can only seek punitive damages. They cannot sue for pain and suffering.

“I want my son’s life to have meaning,” she said. “I want anyone who loses a loved one in the state of Alabama to feel that their lives have meaning.”

So she is calling on anyone who has lost a loved one in the state of Alabama who feels that they have a case for wrongful death to join her in asking legislators to pass reform allowing for pain and suffering in wrongful death cases.

The other thing is something Atkins learned shortly before the trial began. The day before the case was set to be heard before a jury, Atkins said she received a call from her attorney.

“He told me that there was a possibility that the defense would present his heart as evidence,” she said.

Atkins said she and her family were shocked to learn that the doctor who performed Justin’s autopsy had kept his heart for observation, but the family was never told. On top of that, it appears nowhere on the autopsy report that Justin’s heart was kept for observation.

“My first response was ‘can they really do that?’” she said. Apparently, in the state of Alabama and in just about every state in the nation, they can.

After several months of trying to track down by what law forensics laboratories can take such action, her best answer was that while there is no law specifically given them that power, there is no law prohibiting it.

She even found a case in New York where the brain of a 17-year-old car crash victim was kept by the forensic pathologist and the family didn’t find out about it until his classmates found the brain labeled in a jar during a tour of the facility. While a lower court ruled for the family, a higher court overturned the decision saying, as in Alabama, the law was too vague.

After the trial, Atkins contacted the doctor who performed the autopsy, trying to find out what happened to the heart and if it would be possible to have the heart returned to the family.

Through an email, the doctor told her that she had left the forensics lab and that the heart was still there when she left. When she came to testify at the trial, she told Atkins, they couldn’t find Justin’s heart.

When she contacted the forensics lab, Atkins was told that it was their policy to dispose of items left at the laboratory after a period of five years.

“They threw it away like it was garbage,” Atkins said. “That was my son’s heart.”

Since the forensics lab is in Mobile, Atkins has had to go through the District Attorney’s office in Mobile County trying to get them to file charges against the forensics lab for failing to disclose to the family that they kept his heart and for disposing of his heart without attempting to contact the family, charges which amount to a Class C felony.

So now, almost nine years after his death and more than 2 ½ years after the trial, Atkins continues to fight for justice for her son.

With the help of friends, she created a Facebook page called Justin’s Heart.

“My hope is that by doing this we can get the word out that what they are doing is wrong and something needs to be done about it,” she said. “My son deserved better than this. We deserve better than this. Other families deserve better than this.”