Archie Battersbee, a twelve-year-old boy, has died. Against the wishes of his family, his life-saving treatment was withdrawn on Saturday at a London hospital.

The boy’s family have fought an intense battle through the UK justice system to prevent his lifesaving treatment from being withdrawn. Doctors said Archie Battersbee was brain dead and would never wake up, while the family pointed out his heart was racing and hoped he would wake up one day.

– From the beginning, I always thought: Why this rush? His heart is still beating, he grabbed my hand and, as a mother, I know he is still there, his mother Hollie Dance said in June.

She found the 12-year-old dead at home on April 7 and suspects he took a social media ‘challenge’ to commit a life-threatening act that ended up knocking him unconscious. Since then he has been in a coma and is receiving life-saving treatment at the Royal London Hospital.

Unable to go to the hospice

Britain’s High Court ruled on Tuesday that the best thing for the boy would be for treatment to be stopped so that death could occur. In a last-ditch effort to prevent this outcome, the family turned to the European Court of Justice, which announced that the case would not be heard.

“We will fight to the bitter end for Archie’s right to live,” Hollie Dance said in a statement.

When it became clear that life-saving treatment would inevitably be withdrawn, the family tried to obtain the right to transfer Archie Battersbee to a hospice. However, doctors judged his condition to be so unstable that he might not be able to withstand transportation. The family was also not heard in court on this issue.

“It’s barbaric”

On Saturday morning, the twelve-year-old’s life-sustaining treatment ended. Ella Rose Carter, fiancée of Archie Battersbee’s older brother Tom, said in a tearful statement outside the hospital that doctors stopped treating the boy at ten o’clock and two hours later unplugged the fan. A quarter of an hour later he died.

– There is absolutely nothing dignified in seeing a family member die of asphyxiation. No family should go through what we went through. It’s barbaric, says Ella Rose Carter.

Mother Hollie Dance said her son “fought until the end”.

– I am the proudest mother in the world.

Andrea Williams of the Christian organization Christian Legal Center, who legally represented the family, said in a statement earlier this week that Hollie Dance fought for her son despite “the whole system working against her”.

– She was thrown into a whirlwind of legal battles and media attention, simply because she believed her beloved son needed to be given more time.

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