|
 Children's Hospital and Research Center chief of pediatrics David
Durand said in a statement the coroner in Oakland has given Latasha
Winkfield custody of Jahi McMath's body and that her destination is
unknown, according to a hospital statement.
"She is safely out of Children's," tweeted Chris Dolan, an attorney
for the family, on Sunday evening.
Jahi's family reached an agreement on Friday with the hospital
allowing her to be moved to a different facility if they did so
before 5 p.m. local time on Tuesday, when a restraining order
keeping the hospital from removing her from life support is set to
expire.
McMath was admitted to Children's Hospital on December 9 to have her
tonsils removed and for other procedures to address sleep apnea.
After the surgery, she went into cardiac arrest and suffered brain
swelling.
The hospital declared her brain-dead three days later, and made
plans to remove her from the ventilator, but her family has fought
in state and federal court to keep her on life support.
The case has drawn international attention, as well as support from
relatives of Terri Schiavo, who died in Florida in 2005 after a
15-year battle over whether to keep her body alive in a persistent
vegetative state.
"I have everything in place, I just need to get it moving," Chris
Dolan, an attorney for the family, told KPIX 5 in San Francisco on
Sunday.
He said McMath will be moved "come hell or high water" before the
deadline, though he did not elaborate.
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To move the girl, her family needed to provide transportation and
find a facility willing to take her, both the hospital and the
family have said.
A Long Island, New York, extended-care facility, the New Beginnings
Community Center, has offered to care for the child. But it was not
immediately clear if McMath's family had accepted the offer, and
Dolan could not immediately be reached for further comment.
McMath's lungs and heart are only continuing to function because of
air being forced in and out of her body by the ventilator, without
which her breathing and heartbeat would cease, according to medical
experts. Unlike a person in a coma or a vegetative state, McMath
lacks any brain activity, rendering her unable to breathe on her
own, doctors said.
Hospital officials have said the facility and state health officials
are investigating how a routine operation led to McMath's current
condition.
(Reporting by Brendan O'Brien; editing by Edith Honan and Eric
Walsh)
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