/ Source: Reuters
A man in Texas has returned to authorities the pacemaker he carved from his dead mother’s chest, causing an evidence tampering charge against him to be dropped, prosecutors said Wednesday.
“No one wants to prosecute someone whose mother just died,” Harris County Assistant District Attorney Leslie LeGrand III said.
James Allan Donalson, 59, acknowledged removing his mother’s pacemaker after she died in January, saying he wanted to keep it as part of a long-running dispute with a medical supplier.
Prosecutors told Donalson the charge would be dropped if he returned the pacemaker so the medical examiner’s office could study it. He resisted, but LeGrand said Donalson’s brothers eventually convinced him to relent about two weeks ago.
