The family of 12-year-old Archie Battersbee has announced that the young boy passed away on Saturday after his life support was pulled.
Battersbee was initially hospitalized and placed on life support at Royal London Hospital after his mother, Hollie Dance, found him unconscious at her home with a ligature around his neck in April. Dance believes that her son was participating in a TikTok challenge when he suffered from the devastating injury.
As reported by The Telegraph, he died at around 12:15 pm Saturday, sometime after the life support was removed.
“It is with my deepest sympathy and sadness to tell you all that Archie passed … today,” Battersbee’s mother said on Saturday as she walked out of the hospital. “I would just like to say I am the proudest mom in the world. He was such a beautiful little boy. He fought right until the very end, and I am so proud to be his mom.”
Battersbee’s family had been involved in a legal battle for months, pushing for Battersbee’s life support to continue. In late June, a court in the United Kingdom ruled in favor of Battersbee’s family, allowing them to appeal a previous court ruling that called for the removal of the life support.
Last Friday, however, the High Court ruled that the boy’s parents could not move him out of the hospital to a hospice center, arguing it was not in Battersbee’s best interest.
According to The Christian Post, Battersbee’s parents were later denied permission to appeal the High Court’s ruling by the Court of Appeal. They were also unable to receive further assistance from the European Court of Human Rights on Friday after the ECHR said they would not get themselves in the case.
Ella Cater, a family friend who supported Dance throughout the family’s legal battle, called the process “barbaric.”
“He was taken off all medication at 10 am, and his life stats remained completely stable for two hours until they removed all ventilation, and he went completely blue,” The Times quoted her as saying. “There is absolutely nothing dignified about watching a family member or a child suffocate. No family should have to go through what we’ve been through – it’s barbaric.”
Battersbee’s family also detailed their legal battle in a statement on Sunday following Archie’s death.
“No parent or family must go through this again. We have been forced to fight a relentless legal battle by the Hospital Trust while faced with an unimaginable tragedy,” the family said. “We were backed into a corner by the system, stripped of all our rights, and have had to fight for Archie’s real ‘best interests’ and right to live with everything stacked against us.”
“This has now happened too often to parents who do not want their critically ill children to have life-support removed,” they added. “The pressure of the process has been unbelievable.”
“There must be an investigation and inquiry through the proper channels on what has happened to Archie, and we will be calling for change.”
Photo courtesy: ©Getty Images/Jittawit.21
Milton Quintanilla is a freelance writer and content creator. He is a contributing writer for CrosswalkHeadlines and the host of the For Your Soul Podcast, a podcast devoted to sound doctrine and biblical truth. He holds a Masters of Divinity from Alliance Theological Seminary.
