The Nation - News from May 6, 1986
Robert Whipple, 19, who unplugged his comatose brother’s life-support system while holding hospital workers at gunpoint in Phoenix, was sentenced to five years’ probation. Last Jan. 19, Whipple, who had been drinking, took a shotgun into John C. Lincoln Hospital and ordered nurses to turn off his brother’s life-support system. When they refused, he unplugged the machines. After a two-hour standoff, he surrendered to police. John Whipple survived, but four days after the incident, the machines were unplugged at the family’s request, and he died. John Whipple had fallen into a coma on Jan. 16 after a drug overdose.
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