Father brings gun to hospital to buy time for ‘brain dead’ son

HOUSTON -- During a long standoff with police in a Texas hospital room, a father begged staff to give his "brain dead" son a few more hours before taking him off life support.

KPRC reports George Pickering II grabbed a gun in January and marched into Tomball Regional Medical Center where he ended up in an hours-long standoff with police.

"They were saying he was brain dead, he was a vegetable," Pickering told the station. "They were moving too fast. The hospital, the nurses, the doctors."

He was charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, but his son is alive.

“I knew if I had three or four hours that night, that I would know whether George was brain-dead or not,” Pickering said.

Pickering initially brought a gun into the hospital but was quickly disarmed by his other son. Still, the hospital staff says he continued to make verbal threats and the police were called.

"During that three hours, George squeezed my hand three or four times on command," he told the TV station.

Police used a robot to draw back the curtain after hours of negotiations. Pickering then surrendered to police.

Since the standoff, one charge has been dismissed while the other was reduced to a lesser offense and he was given credit for time served and was released in December.

"There was a law broken, but it was broken for all the right reasons. I'm here now because of it," said Pickering’s son, George III. "It was love, it was love."

"The important thing is I'm alive and well, my father is home and we're together again."