A 15-year-old Gwinnett County girl is being credited with a bill that’s headed to the Governor’s desk dealing with parental rights.

Diana Romero was the only survivor of a brutal knife attack at the hands of her own mother six years ago. Isabel Martinez pleaded guilty to the murders of her husband and four of her children. Romero was critically injured.

Romero has since been adopted by her father’s brother and continues to live in Gwinnett. But in order to do so, he had to go to court to face the woman who killed his brother’s family. Martinez wanted Romero to be sent to Mexico to live with her relative.

“Diana was tormented at the very thought of this,” says Sen. Blake Tillery who presented the bill in the Senate Thursday.

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The bill, which severs the parental rights of a parent who is convicted of murder or manslaughter in the other parent’s death, passed after Romero visited the Capitol two weeks ago to tell her story. It was amended onto another Senate bill that had previously passed the Senate and the House.

“This is a brave young lady that wants to make sure that no other kids have to go through the uncertainty she had to face because of her mother’s conviction due to mental illness,” Tillery says.

The bill is unofficially being named the Diana Romero Act.

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