Grieving father says daughter planned to leave plastic surgeon charged in her death: 'he saw an opportunity'
The Florida plastic surgeon charged with the death of his wife intentionally let her die after injecting her with excessive painkillers during cosmetic surgery, the victim's enraged father told Fox News Digital.
Hillary Brown, 33, had confided to friends that she planned to leave Georgetown educated Dr. Ben Brown, 41, after their year-and-a-half marriage began to crumble, Marty Ellington said.
"Everybody needs to know what kind of character this guy is," the father contended. "He’s real suave and debonair. He’ll put on like he’s the victim, but he’s not. He’s literally a Charles Manson."
The Gulf Breeze physician turned himself in on Monday after a judge signed a warrant for his arrest charging him with manslaughter – a second-degree felony that carries a potential life sentence if convicted. He was released on bail.
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Investigators found that the surgeon failed to call 911 for nearly 20 minutes after the victim began twitching, developed blurred vision and started seizing on the operating table.
Hillary Brown, who had three kids from a prior marriage, was finally rushed to the hospital Nov. 21, 2023, where she entered a coma and died a week later.
A medical examiner concluded that the victim died from "complications following lidocaine toxicity."
Ellington said he believes Brown saw a chance to end his wife's life amid their increasingly rancorous relationship and took it.
"I don't think that it was premeditated," Ellington told Fox News Digital. "But I will, to the end of my days, believe that he saw an opportunity. Because when she got to that point (of lidocaine poisoning), he knew that he could, you know, he knew how many minutes to delay and what the outcome would be."
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Brown's staffers told investigators that he resisted their pleas to call 911 as his wife convulsed on the table.
One worker who left the now shuttered practice after the troubling incident told police that Brown would often give his spouse higher doses of medications than recommended for her weight. During a prior procedure, he struggled to wake her up, according to the Santa Rosa County Sheriff's Office.
Brown's lawyer declined to comment. "It’s my policy not to discuss a pending case in the media," attorney Barry Beroset told Fox News Digital.
Ellington, who lives in Houston, alleged that the surgeon's once thriving practice was on the brink of insolvency amid a slew of civil lawsuits and complaints from patients alleging shoddy work.
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His daughter planned to leave him after Christmas, Ellington said.
The heartbroken dad had long harbored misgivings about his son-in-law, and was unnerved by how drastically Brown altered his daughter's appearance through constant cosmetic tinkering.
One friend told him that the doctor was attempting to fashion her face to look like Megan Fox.
"Everything he had done made her look worse and worse from her natural beauty," he said, noting that the couple first met when she went to his office for a breast reduction.
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Ellington said Brown was oddly composed and didn't shed a single tear during his wife's week in a coma.
The father stopped taking Brown's calls soon after his daughter's death, and was repulsed when a friend alerted him that the doctor was selling her ski boots on Facebook Marketplace.
The physician wrote that he was unloading the items because his spouse no longer skied.
"I hope his life every day is as miserable as he's made ours," Ellington said. "And my grandkids and my extended family, you know, and all the other patients that he was so arrogant and egotistical that he didn't take safety precautions into mind."
The Florida Department of Health found that Brown had been negligent.
"The level of disregard Dr. Brown paid to patient safety, even when the patient was his wife, indicates that Dr. Brown is unwilling or incapable of providing the appropriate level of care to his future patients," the agency found.
Brown, who graduated from Georgetown University's Department of Plastic Surgery in 2015, was licensed to practice in several states, including Florida, Virginia, Washington and Washington, D.C.
Dr. Marc Siegel, clinical professor of medicine at NYU Langone Medical Center, said that Brown should never have operated on his own wife – or any relative.
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"Whether this is illegal or not, it's immoral and unethical for any physician to perform procedures on a family member," he told Fox News Digital.
He also ripped the surgeon's refusal to immediately call 911 as his wife writhed on the operating table.
"It’s shocking that they would block an emergency response by not calling 911 immediately, especially during a seizure" he said. "If someone has a seizure, you call 911. It’s an extremely disturbing apparent deviation from standard of care."
Ashley Papa and Julia Bonavita contributed to this report.