A Florida doctor has been charged with homicide for waiting to call 911 after his wife suffered a cardiac arrest on his operating table. Santa Rosa County Sheriff’s officers arrested 41-year-old Benjamin Brown and charged him with homicide and negligent manslaughter over an incident at the Restore Plastic Surgery clinic in Gulf Breeze last November.
Dr. Brown performed scar revision, arm liposuction, lip injection, and ear adjustment procedures on his wife, Hillary, when she complained of blurred vision and muscle twitches, which experts say indicate Lidocaine toxicity. Despite this, the doctor continued to inject Lidocaine into his wife’s system and did not stop until she “went into a seizure and cardiac arrest.”
Colleagues testified that Dr. Brown prevented them from calling 911, saying he would deal with the issue himself. It took up to 20 minutes for Brown to change his mind and request emergency assistance via 911. First responders rushed the woman to the hospital, where tests revealed elevated lactic acid and Lidocaine toxicity. She died a week later.
At the police’s request, a judge issued an arrest warrant for Dr. Brown. He turned himself in to face his charges and was later released on bail. The Florida Department of Health subsequently filed for an emergency restriction on his medical license.
Police decided to charge Dr. Brown following an extensive investigation in partnership with District One Medical Examiner’s Office and the State Attorney’s Office. It found that Brown permitted his wife, who is not medically trained, to prepare her own intravenous (IV) solutions prior to the procedure and that she had taken a number of pills, including Valium, with his consent and oversight.
Immediately before the operation, and taking no account of the IV bag content or the pills his wife had taken, Dr. Brown administered more anesthesia. He also observed as she performed her own suture following the scar revision surgery.
Hillary Brown was 33 years old and the mother of three children.
