Shannon Price believes she “had no choice” but to take her ex-husband Gary Coleman off life support.
In May 2010, the former child star suffered an intracranial hemorrhage from a fall at his Utah home. Two days after he was placed in a medically induced coma, Price instructed the hospital to take Coleman off life support.
People magazine reported that the former “Diff’rent Strokes” star had a will requesting that he be kept alive for 15 days before terminating treatment.
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“He had gone into cardiac arrest, and that is ultimately what took his life,” Price claimed in the upcoming A&E special, “Lie Detector: Truth or Deception,” as quoted by People magazine.
When host Tony Harris asked Price, 39, if she could have given Coleman, 42, more time, she replied “No.”
“They called me Thursday morning and said, ‘Does Gary have a DNR [do not resuscitate order]?’” she explained, as quoted by the outlet. “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,’” she said. “Meaning his condition is not going to get any better. I made the right decision.”
“I asked the questions, I saw the condition he was in,” she insisted. “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, ‘OK, can I see?’ And they showed me, and that’s when I knew.”
Price and Coleman married in 2007 and divorced the following year. She was still living with Coleman at the time of his fatal fall.
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“It was my decision. He did not want the divorce,” she claimed. “I was just still at the house. My stuff was there, everything was there, we were still together… There’s two things I regret – divorcing him and not being able to save his life.”
According to the special, Price presented a document to the hospital that named her the decision maker on Coleman’s medical directive.
Price claimed she found Coleman in a pool of blood after she heard a loud thud in their home. In a recording of her 911 call, Price is heard refusing to listen to the operator’s instructions to help him, saying that she couldn’t cope with the amount of blood present.
“As far as rendering aid, I could have helped him a little bit more,” Price admitted in the special.
Price maintained her innocence regarding the incident. She has also never been charged in connection with his death.
In 2010, Santaquin Police Chief Dennis Howard told People magazine that “there was absolutely nothing suspicious about [Coleman’s] death” and there was “no [criminal] investigation going on.” According to the outlet, Coleman’s death certificate also listed his manner of death as an “accident.”
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For the special, Price took a polygraph test administered by retired FBI special agent and veteran polygraph examiner George Olivo. She was questioned about the details surrounding Coleman’s fatal fall. The lie detector showed “deception indicated” when directly asked if she physically caused Coleman’s fall.
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A statement from Price was shared with Fox News Digital. “We were extremely disappointed with the overall experience of both the polygraph testing and dealing with A&E. Many promises were made and not kept. The testing situation was unfair and very uncomfortable, and the testing was performed non-verbally–which I should have refused. From the beginning, it was apparent they cared more about ratings than finding the truth.”
Olivo was adamant about the results.
“When I say that she failed the exam, I’m not saying that she deliberately, with willful intent, killed him in cold blood – I’m not saying that at all,” Olivo told Fox News Digital. “I don’t know what happened in that house. All I know is that she knows why she failed, and there’s more to the story than she’s telling.”
“It could be that maybe she was there when he fell,” Olivo shared. “Maybe they got into a heated argument, and it turned into a shoving match, and he slipped and fell… I don’t know what it is. I’m not trying to say that I know what happened. I just know that there’s more to the story. It could still be an accident, but an accident that she doesn’t want to show her involvement in.”
Olivo has conducted thousands of polygraph examinations for the FBI. Notably, Olivo administered a lie detector test to Casey Anthony’s parents in 2024 for the A&E and Lifetime special, “Casey Anthony’s Parents: The Lie Detector Test.”
“There’s this idea or notion that if someone tells a lie long enough, then they begin to believe it – I don’t really believe that,” Olivo explained. “I’ve tested folks that were crimes committed 20, 30 years ago, and they’ve been saying the same story.”
“When someone gets very, very confident… they don’t believe they’re going to get caught. They’re so confident now that the lie is accepted. [So], they’re just as confident as if they were telling the truth. But [Price] knows why she failed my test. I’m very confident about that.”
“I don’t purport to know what happened in that house,” Olivo stressed. “Only she knows. She’s the only one alive now who knows what happened in that house. But I maintain that she knows exactly why she failed my test.”
In the episode, Price is heard saying, “I know where I’m at. I’m at peace. There is a reason I am not in prison. There is a legit reason for that. It’s because they did a thorough investigation.”
