Isaiah Haastrup, the brain-damaged baby boy at the centre of a right-to-life legal battle, has died, his Christian father has said.
After a last-resort appeal to the European court of human rights (ECHR) was refused on Tuesday, doctors removed the baby from life-support yesterday. He received palliative care after his extubation.
The one-year-old boy's father, Lanre Haastrup, and his mother, Takesha Thomas, both 36 and from south London, had unsuccessfully fought an application by King's College hospital to withdraw life-sustaining treatment.
On January 29, a high court judge ruled that it was in Isaiah's best interests for treatment to be withdrawn. Doctors said that he could not move or breathe independently and had depressed consciousness after suffering catastrophic brain damage through being deprived of oxygen at birth.
Subsequently, Isaiah's parents were denied permission to take their case to the court of appeal, and an 11th hour appeal to the ECHR was ruled inadmissible on Tuesday.
According to Isaiah's father, who was temporarily banned from the hospital after concerns about his behaviour, treatment was withdrawn at 1pm yesterday, and he died shortly before 8pm.
Earlier, the father wrote on social media: '4 hours independent breathing and counting ... Jesus continue...'. This was followed by another Facebook post, saying: '6 hours'.
After the boy's death, he wrote: 'Lord!! We thank you for Isaiah's life.'
Haastrup told the Guardian: 'Isaiah was extubated at 1pm and breathed on his own till 7.50pm before he died. This was completely different from the three minutes the experts told the court he will only breathe due to his injury.
'He demonstrated that he wanted to live and can breathe on his own, and could have been weaned off the ventilator. I am so proud of him.'
