HILO, Hawai'i — A pregnant Big Island woman was beaten so badly by her boyfriend last week that she was declared brain-dead on Sunday, but is being kept alive in hopes of saving her baby, according to the woman's friends and family.

Sarah M. Fay, 34, has been in "extremely critical condition" at The Queen's Medical Center in Honolulu since she was attacked Friday in the Fern Acres subdivision in Puna. Fay's family has asked that she be removed from life support once her baby is born.

Friends and family said Fay is more than seven months pregnant with a child fathered by her 24-year-old boyfriend, Marwann Timothy Saad Jackson, who was charged with murder yesterday in connection with Fay's beating.

"We're trying to give the baby a chance, even though it's very hard to have her laying there like that," said Fay's older sister, Stacey Fay. "She's brain-dead, there's nothing there, so as soon as the baby is born, we want to let her go so that she can rest peacefully."

"We already feel that her spirit is out, it's gone, but she needs to rest fully in peace and the family also needs closure as well," Stacey Fay said.

Stacey Fay said doctors hope to keep Sarah alive for another two weeks to give the fetus more time to develop before the infant is surgically delivered, "but we're not sure if my sister's body will allow that."

Fay's friends on the Big Island yesterday questioned why a man with Jackson's violent past was released from jail after he pleaded guilty last year to three separate violent felony offenses.

In one of those cases Jackson admitted to driving away as a police officer tried to stop him, dragging the police officer from his car for about 30 feet, and in another case Jackson struck another man with a coconut, opening a gash in the man's head.

Fay's family and her large circle of friends in Puna said she told them he was abusing her, and they urged her to get out of the relationship but Fay returned to Jackson several weeks ago. Friends said she was attacked last week at a Fern Acres home where the couple was housesitting.

"She was scared, and she didn't know where to turn," said Muslimatu Mbacke, Fay's longtime friend and former roommate.

Sarah Fay recently traveled with her two children, ages 7 and 9, to the wedding of Fay's younger brother in Denver, and Mbacke said that in her last telephone conversation with Fay, she urged Fay not to come back.

Stacey Fay said she also knew her sister had been abused for more than a year, but Sarah had a deep "traumatic bond" with Jackson that is not uncommon in abusive relationships. Stacey Fay said she also encouraged Sarah to stay on the Mainland with her children after the Denver wedding, "but she wanted to go back."

A spokesman for the state Department of Human Services said Fay's two children remained in a foster home yesterday. Friends said Fay's ex-husband traveled from his home on the Mainland to the Big Island last weekend to pick up the children.

Jackson, who also used the name Judah Jackson, was charged yesterday with second-degree murder, second-degree murder by omission, kidnapping, first-degree sexual assault, second-degree robbery and violation of an order for protection.

Police said the murder charges reflect the fact that Fay "has been declared dead as a matter of law," although she is still on life support.

Police said they were called to the Fern Acres home at 1:04 p.m. Friday because of a report of an unconscious woman and found Fay already being treated by a Fire Department Rescue crew.

Police said Jackson had allegedly fled in a sedan, and officers stopped the car in the upper Ainaloa subdivision and arrested Jackson.

Police were already seeking Jackson to serve arrest warrants for allegedly violating probation or supervised release in four other felony cases, including the case where the police officer was dragged from Jackson's car.

Jackson pleaded guilty to three of those cases last year, and the most serious charges could have drawn prison terms of up to 10 years, but former Hilo Circuit Court Judge Terence Yoshioka sentenced Jackson to five years' probation and a year in jail in each case.

Jackson, whose criminal record includes 18 prior charges, was released late last year, and by January 2005 prosecutors were filing requests to revoke his probation because Jackson was not complying with the terms set by the judge.

Fay was raised in Champaign, Ill., and graduated from Champaign Central High School in 1989, and briefly attended Illinois State University. About 12 years ago she traveled with a friend to Hawai'i, and "she loved it so much that she wanted to make her life here," Stacey Fay said.

Sarah Fay surrounded herself with a free-spirited circle of friends in Puna that embraced a gentle, 1960s lifestyle, and Stacey Fay said she thinks of her sister as "a blond-haired, blue-eyed, smiling hippie girl.

"This has happened to my sister, but this has also happened to uncountable women, and to men," Stacey Fay said. "I wish that this scourge could be erased from our society, and I think that people need to stop thinking it's none of their business, or they should just look the other way, because people need to get involved. This shouldn't be happening in our society."

Adrena White, who has known Fay for about 12 years, recalled her as a devoted mother who loved reggae dancing and swimming with the dolphins that sometimes approach the shore at Kahena Beach.

"She was really a light beam, more like a butterfly, and she touched people in the community," White said. Fay made her living giving massages, and in the last six months worked at a health food store in Kea'au.

Although she was raised as a Catholic, friends and family also said Sarah Fay was a spiritual explorer, curious about Buddhism and traditional Hawaiian practices. White said Fay met Jackson at a Puna home where she went to engage in a "sweat," or traditional Native American prayer ceremony.

Fay believed in angels and God, and "she really truly believes in miracles, and so do I, so maybe there's still some kind of hope for that little spirit that she wanted to come into this world," White said.

Reach Kevin Dayton at kdayton@honoluluadvertiser.com.