According to online reports, Gary Coleman was divorced from Shannon Price when she gave doctors the authority to remove him from life support on May 28th.
The 42-year-old actor had suffered a serious head injury from a fall in his kitchen two days earlier.
In a 911 call placed from his home by his ex-wife, Gary could be heard in the background asking “what’s wrong?” Coleman was later diagnosed with intracranial bleeding and his condition worsened over the next 48 hours.
Price originally told the hospital that she was Coleman’s wife, but court documents prove that Coleman’s divorce from Price was finalized on August 12, 2008. Still, the couple continued to live together in his Utah home.
And, according to Eonline, even if Price lied about her marital status, she had the legal right to make the decision to pull the plug because Coleman had previously named her in his advanced directive (living will).
“Mr. Coleman had completed an Advanced Health Care Directive that granted Shannon Price permission to make medical decisions on his behalf if he was unable to do so,” reads a statement released by Utah Valley Regional Medical Center to E! News.
“An Advanced Health Care Directive remains in effect regardless of a patient’s marital status, unless modified by the patient. It is a private medical document which the hospital does not have permission to release. However, we received permission to confirm that the document was in effect at the time of Mr. Coleman’s death.”
No other information is available due to federal privacy statutes.
It’s important to note that Price did not kill Coleman by pulling the plug — he was already brain dead by the time he was removed from life support.
Doctors had already independently confirmed that there was no electrical activity in Coleman’s brain for 24 hours before pulling the plug. Additionally, doctors were confident that if he was removed from life support, his brain function alone could not sustain life.
