A 17-year-old boy who received a heart transplant after he was kept off a national transplant list due to his behavioral problems, died Tuesday following a high-speed chase with Roswell police.
Anthony Stokes, of Decatur, was a suspect in a burglary and a carjacking, which police said led to the fatal crash of the stolen black Honda Accord on Georgia 9 highway.
The AJC reports Stokes carjacked the Honda Accord in Dunwoody, then, after police gave chase, he “clipped a car in the intersection and then jumped the curb and hit a pedestrian before colliding with a SunTrust Bank sign.” The Honda was totaled in the crash.
The AJC reports “the pedestrian, 33-year-old Clementina Hernandez,” is in stable condition at North Fulton Hospital.
Channel 2 Action News confirmed that he was the same Anthony Stokes who was denied a heart transplant in a controversial hospital decision that made headline news in 2013.
An elderly Roswell woman told Channel 2 Action News that Anthony Stokes once shot at her after he kicked in her door and found her inside watching TV.
In 2013, Anthony, then only 15, had 6 months to live if he didn’t get a life-saving heart transplant. Stokes was diagnosed with an enlarged heart after he had trouble breathing.
Doctors at Atlanta’s Scottish Rite hospital told Anthony’s mother, Melencia Hamilton, that he did not qualify for a new heart based on his past criminal behavior and poor grades. Doctors feared Anthony would be noncompliant with the strict medicine regimen that was necessary to prevent his body from rejecting the new organ.
Hamilton and her supporters went to the media to express their outrage at the hospital’s decision.
Hamilton told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that the hospital was stereotyping her son, who wore a court-ordered ankle bracelet in the hospital in 2013.
“He’s been given a death sentence because of a broad and vague excuse of noncompliance,” said Christine Young Brown, of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. “There was nothing specific in that decision. Just noncompliance.”
After public backlash, the hospital reversed its decision 2 days later.
