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Father brings gun to hospital to buy time for his ‘brain dead’ son

HOUSTON, TX — A father will be spending the holidays with his family after months in jail. Eleven months ago George Pickering II was in a very different p...
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HOUSTON, TX — A father will be spending the holidays with his family after months in jail.

Eleven months ago George Pickering II was in a very different place.  His son, George Pickering III, was in the critical care unit on life support at a hospital after suffering a major stroke.

Pickering said his son  had a history of seizures, but doctors were talking like there was no hope.

“They were saying he was brain dead, he was a vegetable,” Pickering told KPRC.

The hospital staff was planning for a, “terminal wean”, a process that slowly ends a person’s life. They notified an organ donation organization that they had a likely donor.

“They were moving too fast. The hospital, the nurses, the doctors,” said Pickering. “I knew if I had three or four hours that night, that I would know whether George was brain-dead or not.”

So Pickering, who admits to be being drunk and aggressive that night, took a gun to the hospital to stop the staff from removing his son’s life support.

He was quickly disarmed by his other son, but continued to make threats, and lied about having another weapon.

After hours of negotiations with police, Pickering said he got the signs he was hoping to see from his son.  He was able to get his son to squeeze his hand on command.

Once Pickering knew the hospital wasn’t moving forward with life ending measures, he surrendered peacefully to police.

Pickering was charged with two counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. His son, George Pickering III, is still alive.

One charge was dismissed, while the other was reduced to a lesser offense and he was given credit for time served and was released in December.

“There was a law broken, but it was broken for all the right reasons. I’m here now because of it,” said George III. “It was love, it was love.”

Read more: Father and son involved in hospital standoff

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