Man almost killed in organ donation despite not being legally dead

A St. Louis man almost died — not from being shot in the head, but after hospital staff nearly carried out an organ donation surgery, even though he was not legally dead.

Key Takeaways:

• Larry Black, Jr. was shot in the head, but remained conscious long enough to run from his attacker and get help.

• He remained able to communicate with his family in the hospital.

• Black was on the table in the operating room, with surgical staff preparing to harvest his organs, until his neurosurgeon intervened and saved his life.

• Disturbingly, Black is not the only person with a similarly disturbing case.

The Details:

In September, KFF Health News reported about Black's experience. He had been on the way to his sister's apartment in St. Louis when he was shot in the head.

“I didn’t know I was shot at first,” Black said. “I literally ran like a block or two away.”

He eventually collapsed, but kept fighting to live; he crawled to a woman's house, where he cleaned his head with hydrogen peroxide and wrapped towels around the wound. An ambulance was called, and his sister, Macquel Payne, arrived just before he was taken to the hospital.

“I’m hearing Larry say, ‘I’m good, sis,’” Payne said. “‘I’m OK.’”

Once at the hospital, Black kept drifting in and out of consciousness, and doctors quickly assumed he was brain dead. “I got to hitting my hand on the side of the ICU bed,” Black said. “They was like: ‘That’s just the reaction, the side effects of the medicine. Ask him some questions.’”

So Payne asked him to "blink twice" for yes as she asked him a series of questions, which he did. Eventually, she asked he wanted to live; he again blinked twice. Yet hospital staff claimed the movements were involuntary.

And almost immediately, his family was approached about organ donation.

“I remember my mom saying, ‘Not right now,’” Payne said. “‘It’s kind of too soon.’ She was like, ‘Well, can I at least leave you some brochures or something?’ Then my mom got a little agitated because it felt like she was being, like, pushy. I believe in saving lives. But don’t be pushy about it.”

Eventually, hospital staff convinced the family Black was brain dead, even as he continued to signal that he was still alive.

“I’m like, ‘My brother’s in there tapping on the bed,’” Payne said. “They said, ‘That’s just his nerves.’ But I’m like, ‘No, something’s not right.’ It’s like he was too alert. He was letting us know: ‘Please don’t let them do this to me. I’m here. I can fight this.’ They were saying that’s what the medicine will do, it affects his nerves.”

Zoom In:

Medical staff arranged for Black to have an honor walk, in which an organ donor is honored for giving the gift of life. A video of the experience shows Black with his eyes still open as his family sobs in the background.

Meanwhile, his father, Lawrence Black Sr., refused to believe his son was dead.

Black was under the care of Zohny Zohny, a neurosurgeon who heard about the honor walk over the intercom, with no clue that it was his patient being wheeled into an operating room for organ donation.

Initially, Zohny was scared to take action.

“This is my first year,” Zohny said. “Your first year out as a neurosurgeon is the riskiest time for you. Any mistakes, anything small, basically derails your career. So the moment this happened, my legs went weak and I was very nervous because, at the end of the day, your job as a doctor is to be perfect.”

Zohny said Black hadn't even been given a brain death exam, and sprinted to the operating room.

Staff had already removed Black's surgical gown and had begun cleaning his chest and abdomen. Zohny got there just in time, but still had to fight with hospital staff to get them to stop.

“Get him off the table! This is my patient. Get him off the table," he recalled saying, though the team claimed his family had consented to the organ donation, to which Zohny responded, “I don’t care if we have consent. I haven’t spoken to the family, and I don’t agree with this. Get him off the table.”

Though he knew it could put his job at risk, Zohny intervened anyway, and told Black's family there was a chance he could not only survive, but recover.

Black was taken back to the ICU, and was removed from sedation. Two days later, he woke up.

“I had to learn how to walk, how to spell, read,” Black said. “I had to learn my name again, my Social, birthday, everything.”

After 21 days in the hospital, Black was discharged. While he still suffers some side effects from the shooting, he survived, and now has a wife and children. And unsurprisingly, he is no longer willing to be on the organ donor registry.

Zohny no longer works at that hospital.

The Big Picture:

Black is far from alone in this kind of disturbing experience. This year, another family came forward with a similar story, this time in Kentucky.

Anthony Thomas ‘TJ’ Hoover II was admitted to Baptist Health Richmond in 2021 after experiencing cardiac arrest. Like in Black's case, his family was approached about organ donation, and they agreed. But during the honor walk, he showed signs of awareness.

“We had his honor walk Friday afternoon. During his honor walk, his eyes started opening up," his sister, Donna Rhorer, said. "He was tracking. His eyes were tracking us around. We were told it was just reflexes, just a normal thing. Who are we to question the medical system?”

Yet more signs that Hoover was not brain dead kept occurring, and the organ procurement team wanted to harvest his organs anyway, according to Natasha Miller, who works at the hospital as an organ preservationist for Kentucky Organ Donor Affiliates (KODA).

"He was moving around — kind of thrashing. Like, moving, thrashing around on the bed," Miller said. "And then when we went over there, you could see he had tears coming down. He was crying visibly."

Two doctors refused to move forward with the surgery, Miller said, but a KODA supervisor pressured them to continue to surgery anyway. The incident was so traumatizing that several KODA workers allegedly quit.

Like Black, Hoover is still alive, and is demonstrably not brain dead.

In Florida, Ethan Preseau nearly had his organs removed after an honor walk, but then he woke up and began responding. Preseau had not been on life support; he had been breathing on his own yet had been declared "brain dead." Hospital staff called his stunned family back to his hospital room, where he responded to commands. They called it a "miracle."

The Bottom Line:

Organ donation is a beautiful sacrifice that gives the gift of life. Yet being an organ donor should not mean risking your own life, or families being pressured into making a decision, as they so often are.