Archie Battersbee’s fight goes on – Parents CAN appeal High Court ruling to switch off 12-year-old’s life support
THE parents of a stricken 12-year-old boy have been given permission to appeal a ruling by top judges to switch his life support off.
Archie Battersbee was found with a ligature over his head after a social media dare at home in Southend, Essex on April 7 this year.
The youngster suffered brain damage in the “freak accident” and hasn’t woken since.
A High Court judge last week ruled Archie is legally dead and stands no chance of making a full recovery.
Mrs Justice Arbuthnot said doctors could begin to withdraw life support.
But his parents Hollie Dance and Paul Battersbee have now been given the go-ahead to take their fight to the Court of Appeal.
Read more on Archie's fight
It comes after mum Hollie claimed Archie has squeezed her hand from his bed at the Royal London Hospital.
She begged medics to give the schoolboy a chance to recover and says she knows with her “mother’s instinct” that he is still alive.
Hollie added: “His heart is still beating, he has gripped my hand, and as his mother and by my mother’s instinct, I know my son is still there.”
The court heard previously how the teen has shown no “discernible” brain activity with medics believing he is “brain-stem dead”.
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He was rushed to hospital after being discovered by Hollie in his bedroom at the family home.
She believes he was participating in an online “blackout challenge” when he accidentally starved his brain of oxygen.
The cause of the horror is still under investigation but Hollie says her son was not trying to take his own life.
In a statement outside court last week, the hospital’s Group Chief Medical Officer Alistair Chesser said Archie will be given the “best possible care” while life support is withdrawn.
He added: “We are also ensuring that there is time for the family to decide whether they wish to appeal before any changes to care are made.”
