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http://www.cnn.com/2002/US/08/30/ricci.dead/index.html

Handyman in Elizabeth Smart case dies

August 30, 2002
Posted: 11:37 PM EDT (0337 GMT)
SALT LAKE CITY, Utah (CNN) -- Richard Ricci, the one-time handyman whom police believe was involved in the abduction of teenager Elizabeth Smart, died Friday night, a family spokeswoman said.

Ricci, 48, underwent six hours of emergency surgery Wednesday to correct a spontaneous brain hemorrhage. He had been in a coma since then, and died at 7:28 p.m. Friday at University Hospital, said Nancy Pomeroy.

Police Chief Rick Dinse said Wednesday that if Ricci died, it could have a "big impact" on the Smart investigation.

"He is an individual that during our investigation, generally speaking, he never volunteered a lot of information," Dinse said.

Ricci, who was being held at the Utah State Prison in Draper for a parole violation, told a guard he was suffering from a headache Tuesday evening, said Jesse Gallegos, deputy director of the Utah Department of Corrections. When medical personnel arrived at his cell, they found Ricci unconscious.

He was taken to the prison infirmary, then airlifted to the university's hospital in Salt Lake City by helicopter, Gallegos said.

The Salt Lake County Sheriff's Department found no indication of foul play, Gallegos said.

Ricci not called a suspect

Smart was abducted at gunpoint from the family's 6,600-square-foot home in the early hours of June 5 while her parents and four brothers slept. Her younger sister, who was in the bedroom with Elizabeth, witnessed the abduction.

Ricci once worked in the Smart home as a handyman and has a 30-year criminal record.

Dinse would not characterize Ricci as a suspect, saying there were "other individuals that we are looking at that may have some kind of connection."

"They also may have some connection to Mr. Ricci," the sheriff said.

"He has told us things that we don't believe are true," Dinse said.

Police had charged Ricci with two counts of theft and one count of burglary unrelated to Smart's abduction. He had denied any involvement in the Smart case.

One of the theft counts relates to items he allegedly stole from the Smart home on or about June 6, 2001 -- nearly one year before Elizabeth disappeared.

The items taken were worth about $3,500 and included jewelry, a bottle of perfume and a wine glass filled with seashells, according to court documents.

Ricci also was charged with burglary and theft from another home in the same Federal Heights neighborhood.

A federal grand jury last month indicted Ricci in a bank robbery that took place near Salt Lake City in November 2001, along with two other men, according to the U.S. attorney's office. No one was injured in the robbery.

Ricci was charged with one count each of armed bank robbery, brandishing a firearm in the commission of a violent crime and being a felon in possession of a firearm.

I am glad that this new thread was started....I just now got in on the tail end of the other thread, where they had just been informed, that it was announced the Ricci was dead...

Some posters there, seemed to think that pulling the plug on someone who is declared brain dead was done too quickly...and thought that the family should have waited more days before 'pulling the plug'....

Frankly, I dont know what the situation was in Riccis case, medical wise...however, I had an terrible experience with someone with a brain hemorrhage, being declared brain dead, and thought it might be somewhat helpful to relay our own familys experience with this situation....

My son, a 15yr old boy, was undergoing chemotherapy for a relapse of a usually terminal type of leukemia, when he suffered a massive cerebral hemorrhage...after what seemed like forever, the tests revealed that at least 1/2 of his brain had been destroyed by the hemorrhage...and they further informed us, that due to extreme swelling of the brain, which always occurs in this instance, they had expected that the other half of his brain, would also become destroyed, rendering him brain dead...

They said the hemorrhage was so extensive, that they could do nothing, not even drilling burr holes in the skull to alleviate pressure, which is sometimes done with smaller hemorrhages....

And so a waiting game began...initially our son was not brain dead, according to the machines he was hooked to...he still had some minimum brain function...but 24hrs later, there was not indication of any brain function at all....

Out of consideration to us, being the parents of a child who was to all medical intents 'dead', they docs did not insist on pulling the plug...which they could have done, because in the state of Washington, where we reside, brain death is considered real 'death', and docs can pull the plug, because the patient is now considered dead...

However, the docs waited for another 24hrs. before informing us that we really needed to seriously consider disconnecting my son....now, in our heads we were convinced that our son was gone, but in our hearts, we were unsure...and the docs saw this...

So they again performed their routine tests, which again showed my son as being brain dead...they then temporarily disconnected our son, to see if he would begin to breath on his own, which he did not...they then reconnected him, and took him to another lab, where they performed a test, to see if any oxygen was reaching his brain, or was it being prevented from reaching the brain, due to the severe nature of the hemorrhage....this test showed that absolutely no oxygen was reaching our sons brain....

And so, even tho it was just a little more than 2 days since our son suffered his brain hemorrhage, all tests done repeatedly and repeatedly, being done by some of the best doctors at the Childrens Hospital in Seattle, convinced us that he was 'brain dead' and therefore 'dead' and allowing him more time would do nothing to bring him back to us...

And so sadly we allowed him to be disconnected....

The mere thought that we should have waited, because the doctors might have been wrong, horrifies me, that one would even suggest I pulled the plug too soon, suggests I prefered to see my son dead...Nothing could be further from the truth....I would have done anything in the world to have my son alive, if it were possible...one can come back from 'minimal brain function'....one does not come back to life, if one is truly 'brain dead', verified by multiple and repeated testings...