Posted on 12/31/2015 3:58:12 AM PST by Citizen Zed
George Pickering the Third suffered a massive stroke last January. Doctors diagnosed the 27-year old as "brain dead," and the hospital ordered his life support progressively shut off in a fatal procedure they call "terminal wean."
But George's dad, George Sr., felt in his gut that his son could make it, despite the terminal prognosis. His son just needed more time.
Nevertheless, doctors told the family that George had no hope of recovery. Both George's mother and his brother agreed to take George off life support. Hospital staff even notified an organ donation organization that George's organs would be imminently available.
"They were moving too fast. The hospital, the nurses, the doctors," George Sr. told KPRC. "I knew if I had three or four hours that night that I would know whether George was brain-dead."
That's when George Pickering the Second did something dangerous, and illegal, which saved the life of his son.
George Sr. took a gun into Tomball Regional Medical Center, barricaded himself in with his son and began a three-hour standoff with staff and police, seeking to give George Jr. more time on life support.
Even after he was disarmed, the father remained barricaded in, and even threatened staff and officers, to buy George time on life support.
Then, after three hours, George Jr. surprised everybody --except his dad-- by squeezing his father's hand, on command, three times.
"The SWAT team had their own doctors and when they entered into the critical care room, they saw that my client's son was not brain dead because he was making eye contact (and) was following their commands," the family's lawyer Phoebe Smith told RT. "They were completely amazed."
After feeling his son show signs of life, and hospital staff and officers acknowledging the signs of life, George Sr. surrendered peacefully.
George Jr. recovered completely. "When you see him now, he is a picture of health," Smith said. "I don't think he would have survived but for the fact that his father slowed the process down."
"Almost every day we see our rights to make medical decisions for our loved ones eroding," Bobby Schindler of the Life and Hope Network, told LifeSiteNews. Schindler is the brother of Terri Schiavo, who died after her life support was removed in 2005, even though she showed slight signs of responding to her mother, doctors testified that Terri was in a "minimally conscious state," and the judge deciding whether to remove life support admitted that Terri responded to her mother, though not consistently.
"Sadly, it resorted to a father having to use the threat of violence to afford time for his son to have that chance to improve," Schindler commented. "While violence is never the answer and cannot be tolerated, one can understand the unconditional love parents have for their children and wanting nothing more than to give them the chance to recover."
Arrested, charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and convicted, the father gladly served nearly a year in jail for his crime.
"There was a law broken, but it was broken for all the right reasons," the younger George explained to the Daily Mail. "And I'm here now because of it. It was love, it was love."
This Christmas, newly freed dad and son reunited to celebrate the life of the Christ Child, and, the life of George the Third. "The important thing is I'm alive and well, my father is home and we're together again."
And then there’s the opposite that sometimes happens.
The father of my daughter’s fiancé collapsed, went into a coma about 2 months ago, and, although not brain dead, could not breathe on his own. Unfortunately, he’d signed one of those “living will” papers ten or twelve years earlier, before he got divorced. The ex-wife made the pronouncement to pull the plug. The ex-wife, an officer in a major corporation, was paying alimony and saw this as an opportunity to get out of the payments.
Never sign one of these liberal inspired “living wills”.
In many jurisdictions that threat or use of force is every bit as justified when used on behalf of a third party unable to defend themselves as if used in self-defense--which would mean the conviction should be overturned as a wrongful conviction, and in fact, the father should never have been charged or tried.
That would open one heck of a kettle of legal worms for the jurisdiction, and the doctors and hospital and organ procurement outfits would also be on the hook for serious civil action as well. (IMHO, they should be anyway.)
So if the father had not threatened violence, violence would have been perpetrated on the son. Self contradictory statement.
"There was a law broken, but it was broken for all the right reasons," the younger George explained to the Daily Mail. "And I'm here now because of it. It was love, it was love."
Ere he shall lose an eye for such a trifle... For doing deeds of nature! I'm ashamed. The law is such an ass. - author obscure
It’s the chief of staff at that hospital that should be named. Don’t sign away your organs!
I only know what few details I've read here but it doesn't sound like there was a jury trial (more like some kind of plea bargain).
Well, with the conviction on his record, maybe he won’t be a drunk running around with a gun in the future.
Praise God for one heck of a dad. I saw that too and thought it was a bit callous of mom and brother.
A family we know took their son off life support a few weeks ago. He had suffered a stroke or aneurysm or I am not sure what the medical diagnosis was. He was 20. He had signed up to be an organ donor. They will always wonder.
I've heard that organs are taken anyway, especially relating to eyes. Don't know if it's true; something I heard.
If we want you dead, you die. This guy interfered with the lefties’ grand vision.
“”While violence is never the answer and cannot be tolerated”
Except that we give the State a monopoly on the use of violence and teach our children that this is the way it must be, and that all good citizens stand by and allow the State to do so. Liberals come to view the State as a replacement deity and that when the State decrees something the matter is settled. People who put their trust in the State even are willing to have the State arrest (implying the willingness to use deadly force) people who disagree with them. We have seen such suggestions in the news lately by advocates of the theory that humans are causing the climate to change for the worse. And far too many “law and order” conservatives are willing to give the police a pass for any heads they may have to knock or protesters they may have to bludgeon to restore peace.
The very basis of the Second Amendment is that when all peaceful means are exhausted, that the option for violence sometimes can result in a righteous protection of liberty. The Declaration of Independence was signed by people who knew that it probably meant that this was the case and the next step was violence.
However, when a person makes this decision, the weight of justification is on him. That is exactly why the Founding Fathers appealed to Heaven for guidance, and why they took so long and had so many deliberations before taking that option.
In this extreme case, it sounds like the father was entirely justified in the use of violence to defend another person. But I suspect that he was just very lucky that his son was going to recover despite how his doctors had evaluated his condition.
I would also add that part of the dynamic here may have been who was paying the bills and how much the hospital was going to earn from all the work involved in using the son’s organs for transplantation. If there was no harm in waiting a few more hours, why did they attempt to override the father’s refusals? The peaceful thing to have done would have been to allow the father to be proven wrong. But they may have ended up with another Terri Schiavo on their hands, and millions in support costs they would have had to swallow. Of course, we can never know for sure.
The prosecuting attorney was right to charge the man, but at trial the judge should have ruled innocent due to extreme exigent circumstances.
You know, the way a LOT of judges give instructions to a jury, and the fact that most members of a jury are selected on the basis that they don't know the facts of a case, often contribute to a conviction. During a trial, jurors only get the facts that the shysters want them to have, NOT the whole story.
Some judges are eager to convict anyone who brings a firearm into one of their "Gun Free Zones" (Hospital in this case) and challenges the status quo, regardless of the circumstances or justifications.
They wanted his organs. That is why you do not sign away your organs to the authority of medical professionals. Let your family decide all that as your situation plays out.
If you don’t have a family to decide this, don’t sign away your organs. You quickly move from patient to organ donor at the least excuse. No one has your interest in mind. They want your organs.
Amazing for sure. God bless the father. What a man.
Things move fast when you are an organ donor.
Things move fast when you are an organ donor.
Your BS. Meter is seriously broken. Read the previous stories.
Violence has a rightful and useful place -- and it appears to be needed more and more often, nowadays.
Oh -- and what would Schindler call the murder of his sister -- or the attempted murder of this young man? "Peace, Light and Non-Violence"?
Dumb@$$3d liberals...
Troll, troll, troll your post
gently down the thread
You're from California,
what was that you said?
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