Archie Battersbee’s mother Hollie Dance announced her son’s death today (August 6) outside the Royal London Hospital.
Ms Dance was surrounded by family as she made a statement in front of the media.
Speaking through tears, Ms Dance said: “In sadness, Archie passed at 12.15pm today.
“I would just like to say I am the proudest mum in the world.
“He was such a beautiful little boy. He fought right until the very end and I am so proud to be his mum.”
In an interview with Sky News, recorded on Friday, Ms Dance said she was “pretty broken” and that the day had been “absolutely awful”.
Breaking down, she said: “The last however many weeks since 7th April, I don’t think there’s been a day that hasn’t been awful really.”
Ms Dance added: “It’s been really hard. Despite the hard strong face and appearance obviously in front of the cameras up until now, I’ve been pretty broken.”
She said the hospital had made it clear there were no more options and that life support would be withdrawn at 10am on Saturday.
Asked if there was anything more she could do, Ms Dance said: “No. I’ve done everything that I promised my little boy I’d do. And I’ve done it.”
Late on Friday, a last ditch plea was to the European Court of Human Rights to intervene in the case was rejected, following a High Court ruling that he must remain at Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel, east London.
Archie’s parents had fought a long-running legal battle over the withdrawal of treatment and in recent days made bids to the High Court, Court of Appeal and European Court of Human Rights to have him transferred to a hospice to die.
The 12-year-old was in a coma since he was found unconscious by his mother in April and was being kept alive by a combination of medical interventions, including ventilation and drug treatments.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article