American woman of Texas with meth possession history accused of murdering pregnant hospital staffer’s unborn baby after credit card arrest

By Edward Era Barbacena

A series of arrests over the span of a week in and around Fort Worth, Texas tells the story of a life spiraling dangerously out of control.

What began on April 10 as a credit or debit card abuse case against 39-year-old Cheri Aziza Akil allegedly escalated just two days later to driving while intoxicated, suicidal ideation, and punching a pregnant hospital staffer with such force that the woman lost her unborn baby. Days after that, a longstanding methamphetamine possession case appears to have put Akil in renewed legal jeopardy in Taylor County after the alleged attack, Tarrant County Jail records indicate.

Akil’s financial criminal case led to her April 10 arrest and the issuance of a $1,500 surety bond. Jail records show that Akil was arrested on April 12 for allegedly driving while intoxicated and for allegedly intentionally/knowingly operating an illicit game room. Records also show that a murder charge was issued the same day.

By April 17, jail records indicated that the defendant also has a pending possession of methamphetamine case.

According to Dallas ABC affiliate WFAA, Akil is accused of punching the pregnant hospital worker in the stomach just after noon on April 12 at John Peter Smith Hospital in Fort Worth. This reportedly occurred after Akil was in the custody of the Tarrant County Sheriff’s Office. She was described in the report as a potentially suicidal inmate who had been taken to the hospital for treatment

Akil, whose Facebook page identifies her as a “stay-at-home parent,” was allegedly being restrained in bed by hospital staff when she punched the hospital employee. After the punch, hospital staff discovered that the pregnant woman’s unborn child no longer had a pulse.

Under Texas law, it is a capital crime if a “person murders an individual under 10 years of age” — and the definition of an individual “means a human being who is alive, including an unborn child at every stage of gestation from fertilization until birth.”

An October 2018 report from Abilene ABC affiliate KTXS named Akil as one of 40 people facing indictments in Taylor County. That was a meth possession case that led to a guilty plea in June 2021 with a deferred adjudication of a sentence of three years of community supervision and 160 hours of community service, Taylor County court records reviewed by Law&Crime show.

Records also show that prosecutors filed a motion to revoke that deferral in October 2022. A docket entry from Jan. 4, 2023 said that Akil was declared guilty, her deferred community supervision was revoked, and a seven-year probation period went into effect. Another motion to revoke community supervision was filed on April 17, the day Tarrant County records listed Akil as subject to a hold in the meth possession case.

In June 2021, the judge who accepted the meth possession guilty plea found Akil to be mentally competent