“Do you want us to keep him on life support or do you want to pull the plug?” hospital staff asked the wrong family. Family members are outraged after learning that their loved one was removed from life support at a Washington hospital - two years after he was killed in a medical mix-up.
![[“I’m at a loss for words how badly they handled this,” the son of the person actually killed has said]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2024/12/20/11/iStock-157533457-copy.jpg)
Now, the heartbroken family is taking legal action to hold the hospital responsible for the alleged mistake. The confusion started in 2021 when PeaceHealth Southwest Medical Center staff wanted to understand whether the family of patient David Wells wanted to keep him on life support — but they called the family of the man sharing his hospital room instead, a December complaint filed in Clark County, Washington, alleged.
Debbie Danielson, the sister of Wells’ hospital roommate, Michael Beehler, received a call from the Vancouver, Washington hospital asking her to make a “life-or-death” decision, the complaint says. She made the “difficult choice” to remove him from life support, according to the complaint.
But it wasn’t Beeheler. But Danielson’s brother was not dead — an alarming discovery she made when she received a call from Beehler. “You can’t be alive. You’re dead!’” Danielson recalled telling her brother over the phone, KGW reported.
Beehler called Danielson and then both called the police, the complaint states. “We made life-ending decisions for a person we don’t even know,” Danielson’s husband told KGW. Days later, the Clark County Medical Examiner’s Office identified the body in the funeral home as belonging to Wells, not Beehler, the complaint says.The medical examiner’s office then notified Wells’ son, Shawn Wells.
