Alabama Mom Nearly Died of Lead Poisoning in 2022. CBS News Still Hasn't Said Who Caused It.

A Six-Month Mystery Illness

Hannah Pettey spent six months in 2021 and early 2022 getting sicker with no diagnosis. By January 2022 she couldn't walk without rolling around her house in an office chair, according to her account given to CBS News correspondent Anne Marie Green. She missed her own daughter Gracie's second birthday party because she was too weak to get out of bed.

Hannah had two small children at the time, Lincoln, 3, and Gracie, 2. Her husband, Brian Mann, a chiropractor, told CBS News he had no idea what was wrong with her. "That's out of my forte," Mann said. "That's someone that I would refer out, refer to a specialist, which is what I wanted to do."

A Phone Call Her Mother Couldn't Shake

On January 18, 2022, Hannah's mother, Nicole Pettey, spoke to her daughter by phone and says something in her voice set off alarms. "I knew something was wrong," Nicole told CBS News. When she couldn't reach Hannah afterward, she said she called repeatedly until Hannah managed to gasp out a request: take me to the hospital.

Brian was at work, so Nicole drove Hannah to the University of Alabama at Birmingham hospital herself, according to the CBS News account. She documented the scene on her phone.

Hours From Death

At the hospital, a doctor told Nicole her daughter was gravely ill but that her vital signs looked stable enough that the hospital might not admit her. Nicole says she pushed back, telling staff Hannah would die if sent home. Moments later, Hannah suffered a severe seizure and tore off her hospital gown in the chaos.

"She was skin and bones," Nicole said. "They told me that she was actually starving to death when we got there. They said she had hours to live."

One doctor, according to Nicole's account, turned her scrutiny on the mother rather than the husband, asking pointedly who was responsible for Hannah's care. When Nicole explained that Hannah was married, the doctor's surprised reaction, as Nicole recounts it, suggested she hadn't expected a spouse to be in the picture at all. Hannah lost consciousness during the seizure, and Nicole texted Brian to tell him what had happened.

The Unanswered Questions

The segment's own title, as CBS News framed it, poses the question directly: who was trying to kill her. That framing signals investigators and family suspected the lead poisoning was not accidental. But the material provided by CBS News and republished by Yahoo News cuts off before identifying a cause of the lead exposure, naming any suspect, or describing whether Alabama law enforcement opened a criminal investigation, filed charges, or reached any conclusion.

Brian Mann, for his part, has said only that he didn't know what was making his wife sick and wanted her to see a specialist. Nothing in the material reviewed here contradicts that account or establishes wrongdoing by him or anyone else. No arrest, indictment, or official determination of intentional poisoning appears in the reporting available.

Lead poisoning severe enough to cause seizures and near-starvation is rare in adults and typically points to a specific, identifiable exposure source, whether environmental, occupational, or something ingested. Doctors treating Hannah in January 2022 apparently recognized the severity of her condition immediately once admitted, which is why the case drew national television coverage in the first place.

Based on what's been reported, the most basic questions remain unanswered: how did lead get into Hannah Pettey's body, and did another person put it there. Alabama court records and law enforcement statements, if any exist, were not part of the material reviewed for this report.