SALT LAKE CITY — The parents of former child TV star Gary Coleman are seeking custody of his body and want it returned to the star’s boyhood home in Illinois.
Coleman died in Utah from a brain hemorrhage Friday at age 42.
Coleman’s former manager and family spokesman Victor Perillo said today that Coleman’s parents are the legal custodians of his body because he was divorced from wife Shannon Price in 2008. It was Price who ordered that Coleman be taken off of life support.
Utah Valley Regional Medical Center spokeswoman Janet Frank says Price was named in an advanced health care directive that allowed her to make health care decisions for Coleman when he couldn’t make them for himself.
On the 911 call from May 26, the day Coleman apparently had a seizure or hit his head and fell, Price refers to Coleman as her husband.
She can be heard asking a Utah emergency dispatcher to send help for Coleman, who was bleeding from the back of his head and “bubbling at the mouth” after falling.
“I just don’t want him to die,” Price said in the call. “I’m freaking out like really bad.”
She said he had just gotten to Coleman’s Santaquin home about 65 miles south of Salt Lake City and was going downstairs to make some food for her and that she then heard a “big bang.”
“Send someone quick because I don’t know if he’s like gonna be alive cause there’s a lot of blood on the floor,” Price said.
Santaquin Police Chief Dennis Hammond has said Coleman had a dialysis treatment that day. It’s unclear whether that may have been related to Coleman’s fall.
Coleman’s 4-foot-8 stature stemmed from kidney problems and required at least two transplants earlier in his life and dialysis. Last fall, he had heart surgery complicated by pneumonia, his attorney has said. In February, he suffered a seizure on the set of “The Insider.”
Coleman was conscious at the hospital the day of the 911 call, but slipped into unconsciousness the next day and was taken off life support Friday with family at his side.
Police records show Coleman and Price had a tumultuous relationship from the very beginning of their courtship, which started when they met on the set of the 2006 comedy, “Church Ball.”
In January 2007, Coleman called police because he was worried Price was going to bring her three brothers to confront him following an argument they had. Then in July of that year, he exploded at Price in a clinic parking lot in Provo.
“Coleman was yelling and pounding his steering wheel for approximately 10 minutes before he jumped out of his truck. He ran out in front of his truck and around to the woman’s door, stopping several cars, and then he went to his door and was running around, yelling and screaming and throwing his arms in the air as he did,” the police report states. “Coleman was yelling that he could not take it anymore.”
The report says Price felt threatened and was worried things were going to “get out of control the way they did earlier.” The actor was charged with disorderly conduct and eventually placed on probation.
One month later, Coleman whisked Price to a Nevada mountaintop to wed.
By August 2008, the two had divorced. It is unclear whether they ever remarried, but they remained close and their legal problems continued. In February, Coleman pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor criminal mischief charge related to a domestic violence incident in April 2009.
No details are in court documents, but defense attorney Randy Kester told The Associated Press that Coleman and Price had an argument which got out of hand.
“No one was injured and no ambulances were called,” Kester said at the time. “It was just a disagreement.”
Coleman starred for eight seasons on the sitcom “Diff’rent Strokes,” starting in 1978.
The tiny 10-year-old’s “Whachu talkin’ ‘bout?” was a staple in the show about two African-American brothers adopted by a wealthy white man. Coleman played Arnold Jackson, the younger of the two brothers.
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