Gary Coleman’s ex-wife, Shannon Price has claimed she had “no choice” but to take the late actor off life support.
Coleman, who starred in the sitcom Diff’rent Strokes, died in 2010 at the age of 42 after falling down the stairs and suffering an intracranial hemorrhage at his home in Utah. A 2024 documentary suggested his death was “suspicious.”
After Coleman’s fall he was placed in a medically-induced coma. Price instructed doctors to take Coleman off life support after two days, despite the star having a living will that requested he be kept alive for 15 days before ending treatment.
In the first episode of the upcoming A&E docuseries Lie Detector: Truth or Deception, Price discusses the circumstances around Coleman’s death.
According to People, she tells host Tony Harris: “I had no choice. He had gone into cardiac arrest, and that is ultimately what took his life.”
Coleman arrived at the hospital on a Wednesday, and the following day Price decided to withdraw life support.
“They called me Thursday morning and said, ‘Does Gary have a DNR [Do Not Resuscitate order]?’” says Price in the new show. “And I said, ‘Yeah, resuscitate him.’ I tried. I tried to do everything in my will.
“Thursday I go visit him, speak with the doctors, and they are like, ‘Shannon, we do not think that he is going to make it until Friday,’ Meaning his condition is not going to get any better. I made the right decision.”
Asked how she knew her former husband would not recover, Price responded: “I asked the questions, I saw the condition he was in.
“I just knew. I mean, he was basically already gone. And I said, ‘Okay, are his eyes dilated?’ And they said, ‘Yes.’ And I said, ‘Okay, can I see?’ And they showed me, and that’s when I knew.”
According to Harris, doctors at the hospital were unaware that Price and Coleman had divorced. “Doctors at the hospital assumed Shannon was still married to Gary when in fact they had been divorced in secret,” says the host.
“Shannon presented a document at the hospital naming her as the decision maker on Gary's advanced medical directive, giving her the right to make decisions about his end of life treatment and care.”
The couple married in 2007 and divorced in 2008. “It was my decision, he did not want the divorce,” says Price. “I was just still at the house. My stuff was there, everything was there, we were still together.”
She adds: “There’s two things I regret: divorcing him, and not being able to save his life.”
In the show, Price is told by George Olivo, a former FBI agent and veteran polygraph examiner, that she has failed to honestly answer questions related to Coleman’s death after being interviewed while hooked up to a polygraph test.
Olivo asked Price whether she ever struck Coleman, and whether she intentionally withheld help from him after he fell. She answered “No” to both questions, and the polygraph results were inconclusive.
However, when Olivo asked whether Price physically caused Coleman to fall, or to fall that day, she again answered “No” but Olivo informed her the polygraph result came back as “failed, with deception indicated.”
The 2024 Peacock documentary Gary included Price’s 911 call and speculation about his death. Price told the camera: “People think that I did this. Because I’m the ex-wife, I’m the evil person, right?”
Lie Detector: Truth or Deception premieres on July 10.
