The Santa Rosa County Sheriff’s office says that a Florida surgeon was charged with his wife’s death after she had a heart attack on his operating table and he didn’t call 911 right away.
The sheriff’s office said in a news release that 41-year-old Benjamin Brown was arrested on Monday on charges of murder and reckless manslaughter.
There was a medical emergency at the Restore Plastic Surgery Center in Gulf Breeze on November 21, 2023. Deputies were called. Hillary Brown, who was being operated on by Benjamin Brown, stopped responding and started having a seizure while she was going through several operations.
From what the sheriff’s office says, she was taken to the hospital and put on life support. After a week, she died.
“After an extensive investigation in conjunction with the District One Medical Examiner’s Office and the State Attorney’s Office, our detectives requested a warrant for the arrest of Dr. Benjamin Brown,” the sheriff’s team said.
The Florida Department of Health asked for Benjamin Brown’s medical license to be limited in the state in a document made in May. According to the health department, on November 21, 2023, Benjamin Brown was working on Hillary Brown. He was fixing her scars, doing arm liposuction, injecting her lips, and adjusting her ears. Hillary Brown is said to have made her IV bags and taken a “handful of multicolored pills,” including Valium, before the surgeries.
According to the health department, Benjamin Brown did not correctly write down what was in the IV bag, and the pills were not written down at all.
Hillary Brown helped with her treatments by sewing her skin back together. It’s not clear if she has an education in medicine. Some posts on the Restore Plastic Surgery clinic’s Facebook page show Hillary in scrubs, and in another post, she is shown in other clothes.
The health department says that Hillary Brown got antsy and her feet started to twitch during some treatments. She also told her husband that she saw orange and her vision started to get blurry.
“Lack of sleep, twitching muscles, and blurred vision are all early signs of lidocaine toxicity,” the health department wrote in the report.
An arrest warrant says that someone “continued injecting unknown amounts of Lidocaine and did not stop until the victim went into a seizure and cardiac arrest,” even after Hillary Brown started to show signs of an overdose.
A medical assistant asked Benjamin Brown if they should call 911, and Brown said “no” or “wait,” according to the health department. Police say that an employee told them that they asked him “several times” if he wanted them to call 911, but he said “he wanted to try and do it himself,” which is what the arrest warrant says.
The health department says Benjamin Brown didn’t ask a helper to call 911 until about 10 to 20 minutes after her seizure.
They took Hillary Brown to a trauma center “with an elevated lactic acid level and suspected lidocaine toxicity.” She lost awareness and died on November 28, 2023.
Benjamin Brown was charged with second-degree criminal murder and manslaughter by careless conduct. From what I can tell, he was booked into the Santa Rosa County Detention Facility on Monday and freed the same day on a $50,000 bond.
At this point, it’s not clear if he has a lawyer. Online records show that the hearing is set for July 11.
“Permanently closed” is what Google says about Restore Plastic Surgery.
