Hospital calls wrong family to pull plug on brain dead man and they did [View all]

[Renew Deal]

You have to read the entire thing and then you still won’t believe it...

A horrific hospital mix-up left a Brooklyn woman grieving for nine days at the bedside of a brain-damaged man who doctors insisted was her brother — but who was actually a stranger with the same name, a new lawsuit charges.

But only after she gave consent to have her “brother” taken off life support at St. Barnabas Hospital did Shirell Powell learn the shocking truth: Her real sibling was in jail — and she had just sent a stranger to his death, her Bronx Supreme Court lawsuit says.

“I nearly fainted because I killed somebody that I didn’t even know. I gave consent,” said Powell, 48, of Crown Heights.

“I was like, ‘Where is my brother? What is going on?’ I was devastated.”


The saga began July 15, when Freddy Clarence Williams, 40, was admitted to the Bronx hospital, unconscious from an apparent drug overdose, according to Powell’s lawsuit.

Williams had his Social Security card on him, and it identified him by that name, the court papers say.

But the hospital phoned Powell anyway, telling her that her brother, Frederick Williams, who also is 40 but has no middle name, had been admitted and was near death.

She rushed to the man’s bedside.

“He had tubes in his mouth, a neck brace,’’ Powell told The Post. “He was a little swollen . . . [But] he resembled my brother so much.

“He couldn’t speak from the time they brought him in the hospital. They just assumed it was my brother.”
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https://nypost.com/2019/01/27/doctors-said-brain-dead-man-was-my-brother-he-wasnt-suit