HOLLYWOOD, Calif. — Shannon Price is explaining her decision to end Gary Coleman’s life after he suffered a brain hemorrhage from a fall at home.
"The doctors told us that even if they had done surgery on him, he would’ve died," the actor’s ex-wife told TMZ of her reasoning to take Coleman off of life support last Friday. "He would’ve bled to death during the surgery. Even if they did take a chunk out of his brain, he would not be the same. He’d basically be like Muhammad Ali … I mean, he would have died sooner or later from that."
Price, 24, said it has been difficult listening to the public question her decision.
"I don’t want people to be so hard on me thinking I had to pull the plug too early," she said. "He wouldn’t have made it anyway. His heart would’ve just given out. I don’t want people to sit there and think I’m a bitch, and that I didn’t care about him."
Even more difficult, Price said, is hearing chatter that she may have played a part in Coleman’s death at age 42.
"A lot of people sit there and say, yeah, she pushed him. People are so cruel, they don’t even know," she said. "I was upstairs, he was downstairs. How am I going to push him? That affected me more than anything … the scrutiny people come up with. It’s just heartless. Why would I want to hurt my husband, are you kidding?"
Price and Coleman divorced in 2008 after a year of marriage, but she said the former Diff’rent Strokes did a lot for her during their time together.
"He bought me a car, which he chose to do, which I never asked him for," she said. "I thought that was very sweet of him to do that."
