Nathaniel Marston UPDATE: November 11, 2015 - Dear family and friends, it is with a heavy heart that I share this devastating news. My beloved and cherished son, Nathaniel Marston, who was putting up the good fight until last night was not able to continue due to the traumatic and devastating nature of his injuries. Nathaniel passed away peacefully as I held him in my arms. Father William, myself and his second Mommy Lisa, and our dear friend Charlotte were by his bedside, he was not alone. His injuries, which Dr.’s did their best to heal were not responding to treatment and one after another his bodily functions failed to support his life. 
 
 Had Nathaniel lived he would have required a ventilator and would never have been able to utter one more word and would have been sentenced to life as a quadriplegic. A condition that Nate would have never have been able to tolerate. By Gods love and mercy Nathaniel was spared this living hell and has traveled on to be with God, his cherished Grandmother Mary Jackson, Grandfather John Jackson and my sister his Aunt Nora…. God is merciful and because of his mercy God ended Nathaniel’s pain and suffering at 3:15 today PST in Reno, NV. Nathaniel now lives with Father God, surrounded with peace, love and light. 
 
 Know that I am deeply grateful for all of you for taking this tragic two week journey with me Nathaniel and our family. Your unfailing support, prayers, love and positive thoughts that you have sent our way, in what has been the worst two weeks of my life, have held all of us up giving us the strength to get through each hellish day. 
 
 Arrangements will be made for a memorial service in New York City, NY, Kauai, HI and Gerlach, NV. As soon as dates for these services are known they will be posted. Again, thank you for your prayers, your love, your kindness and your friendship which has allowed me and my family to be strong enough to be by my son's side for these past 12 days. The outpouring of your love came as an unexpected gift and I don't know how I will repay you for all of your love, prayers and support. Thank you for sharing your love, your experiences with me about how my treasured child, a man who grew into an individual who touched more lives than I ever could have known. XOXOXOXOXOOX ||||| Nathaniel Marston, former star of One Life to Live, appears to be fighting for his life following a horrific car accident. 
 
 The 40-year-old soap star's mother, Elizabeth Jackson, has been posting updates of her son's condition to her Facebook page. Jackson wrote in her initial post on Saturday, "Please pray for my son Nathaniel Marston.. He was in a car accident last night and is in the intensive care on life support. Back and neck broken in several places.Other internal injuries.Please pray that he will recover and walk again." 
 
 The Nevada Highway Patrol confirms to ET they responded to a single vehicle collusion on Oct. 30, at 9:10 p.m. According to a preliminary crash investigation, Marston was traveling southbound on SR447 in a blue 1985 Ford F-150 pickup, "when he allowed the truck to drift across the northbound travel lane and enter the east dirt shoulder. The vehicle then rotated and overturned multiple times. The vehicle came to rest on the west side of SR447 on its wheels facing west. Marston was not wearing his seatbelt and was ejected from the vehicle during the course of the crash." 
 
 His mother later wrote in another Facebook update that police told her Marston was sober at the time of the accident, and had sustained a broken and fractured neck, broken shoulder, broken ribs, and a collapsed lung. "Please pray for him," she wrote. 
 
 The upsetting news continued early into Sunday morning, when Jackson shared what Marston's doctor allegedly told her. "In all likelihood, if he lives, he will be paralyzed from the neck down and will not breathe without a ventilator machine," she relayed. 
 
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 "Oh my God please give me strength," Jackson wrote. 
 
 On Monday, however, Jackson said that Marston was able to communicate, and "is not going to give up without a fight." 
 
 "He is going into surgery at 3:00 this afternoon. The goal is to get him breathing on his own," she said in her latest update. "The doctor said that there is a good chance that he will recover the use of upper body movement and a slim chance that he will walk again." 
 
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 "Recovery will take two or more years but, where there is life there is hope. Nate has never walked away from a fight and he is determined to win this one," Jackson said. 
 
 Marston appeared starred as Michael McBain on One Life to Live, which is no longer on the air, from 2001-07. ||||| Two-year-old Israel Stinson was declared brain-dead and put on life support in April 2016. "I know you're going to come out of this, baby," his mother Jonee Fonseca tearfully said as she tickled and tried to wake him. Stinson was removed from life support on Aug. 25 after a long court battle. (Life Legal Defense Foundation) 
 
 It all started with an asthma attack. 
 
 Israel Stinson was an adorable toddler with a sweet smile and unruly hair. But on April 1, he began having trouble breathing. After he was taken to a northern California hospital, the unthinkable happened: Israel suffered a heart attack. After 40 minutes of CPR, doctors were able to restart his heart. But nearly an hour without oxygen had left him brain dead, they determined. 
 
 That’s when the battle began. 
 
 Stinson’s parents did not believe the doctors. Nathaniel Stinson and Jonee Fonseca went to court to demand that Israel be kept on life support in the hope that he would recover. 
 
 “Israel’s medical chart … said he was deceased. But Israel is ALIVE!” Fonseca wrote. “God is telling me not to let go.” 
 
 When courts ruled against them, the parents flew their son to Central America in a desperate attempt to find him treatment. 
 
 The four-month saga came to an abrupt end Thursday, however, when a judge issued a surprise ruling against the parents. Israel was taken off a ventilator and quickly stopped breathing. 
 
 This time there was no disagreement. 
 
 “He’s gone,” his mother tearfully told the Sacramento Bee on Thursday afternoon. 
 
 After Israel’s parents posted emotional but controversial videos of their son’s condition online, the tragic case drew national attention and sparked debate over conflicting medical, legal and religious definitions of “death.” What doctors dismissed as Israel’s involuntary muscle twitches, the family saw as intentional responses. 
 
 The debate echoes previous cases, some of which became causes célèbres. The most famous was that of Terri Schiavo, a woman with brain damage whose parents fought for years to keep her alive until a judge ultimately granted her husband’s wish to have her feeding tube removed. In 2013, 13-year-old Jahi McMath was declared brain dead after a tonsillectomy went tragically wrong. Her family is still fighting to keep her on life support. 
 
 [Why a family fights over their ‘healthy and beautiful’ daughter, legally dead since 2013] 
 
 Thursday’s events are unlikely to dampen the decades-old national debate. 
 
 A pro-life group representing Israel and his family pro-bono told The Washington Post the outcome was “cruel” and potentially criminal. 
 
 “In no circumstances ever, ever should somebody be put to death without due process of law,” said Alexandra Snyder of the Life Legal Defense Foundation, adding that the family felt state law entitled them to consult another doctor before Israel was taken off life support. 
 
 Children’s Hospital in Los Angeles told The Post it could not comment because of “privacy regulations.” Israel had already been declared brain dead by three doctors at two hospitals, Snyder says, although she said the family questioned those diagnoses. 
 
 Israel’s sad story began this spring. 
 
 “April 1 was the last time I was able to see my son speaking and hearing his voice,” Fonseca, a pharmacy technician, said in a YouTube video. That is when Israel suffered a severe asthma attack. After he was taken to UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento, his condition deteriorated. He suffered a heart attack that left him brain dead, according to a doctor, and in need of a ventilator to breathe. 
 
 The toddler was then transferred to another hospital, Kaiser Permanente in Roseville, Calif., where two more doctors determined that he was brain dead. He could not breathe or maintain a heartbeat on his own and had no hope of recovery, they said. 
 
 Israel’s parents, however, disagreed. 
 
 According to Snyder, the boy’s parents “distrusted” the diagnosis at UC Davis because they felt their son’s heart attack might have been prevented. “There were things that undermined their trust,” Snyder said. They also rejected the opinions of the doctors at Kaiser, which the parents felt was too quick to rule Israel brain dead. 
 
 Doctors put Israel on a diet of dextrose, or sugar. But his family felt the hospital was mistreating him. 
 
 “Israel is essentially starving and Kaiser refuses to give him the necessary protein, fat and vitamins intravenously,” they wrote. “They simply refuse to.” 
 
 Kaiser even issued a California death certificate for Israel but the parents refused to sign it, according to the Bee. 
 
 Instead, his parents set up a GoFundMe page asking for money to help them find another hospital to help Israel. 
 
 “We will use your contribution to fight Kaiser Permanente Roseville Medical Center in Sacramento and to pay for an air medical transfer to another hospital, likely in another state,” they wrote. “Israel means apple of God’s eye and he truly is a child of God with a lot of fight in him!” 
 
 “We are a Christian family,” Nathaniel Stinson said in an April 29 video. “We are actually looking for any hospital right now that would actually take our son. He’s currently on life support but we do believe he is still alive. He is actually moving a lot more the last couple of days. And we think our son does have a chance.” 
 
 They also posted moving videos showing Israel reacting to being tickled. 
 
 “Israel baby, Mommy’s here. I’m gonna tickle you one more time. Do it one more time,” Fonseca can be heard saying in one video. “There you go. There you go. His blood pressure’s going way up. Oh, you can hear Mommy and you can feel Mommy, huh? Israel, you gotta stop fooling everybody. How long is it going to take, huh? I know you’re going to come out of this, baby.” 
 
 The videos drew sympathy and donations but did not spur any hospitals to take Israel in. 
 
 So Israel’s mother filed an injunction to prevent Kaiser from taking the boy off his ventilator. 
 
 On May 13, a federal judge rejected that suit, the Bee reported. 
 
 “While Ms. Fonseca’s maternal instincts and moral position are completely understandable,” U.S. District Judge Kimberly J. Mueller wrote, “the concerns reviewed here suggest she is unlikely to obtain the relief she seeks, and weigh against a preliminary injunction based on the law this court is sworn to apply and uphold.” 
 
 “I’m a parent and I can’t imagine how this family must feel,” Wade Smith, director of the neurointensive care unit at the University of California at San Francisco told the newspaper. “But this is a situation in medicine where we have very clear absolutes. This child will never wake up. … It is really hard for a physician to bring the news to a parent that their child has died. But that’s the reality. I’m sad for the parents and sorry for the situation. But at some point, they have to accept it and move on.” 
 
 Israel’s parents did move on, but not in the way the doctor expected. 
 
 On May 22, just days before a deadline to prove their case or pull the plug, they swept Israel out of the country. 
 
 “Victory!!! Israel Stinson was transferred out of Kaiser Permanente yesterday!!! He has been taken to another facility and is already receiving care!!!” his parents wrote online. “Due to the sensitivity of Israel’s case, we are not yet ready to disclose where he is, but we can say this … in order for Israel to receive his badly needed care, he had to be transferred out of the United States. That’s right.” 
 
 The sudden flight out of the country was funded by more than $20,000 the family had received, mostly from strangers. 
 
 “Because of you all and your generous donations, Israel was able to beat the odds and is now being cared for as a live human being,” they wrote. 
 
 The mystery country, it turned out, was Guatemala, where Snyder had helped the family gain admission to a private hospital. There, doctors did what American doctors had refused, giving Israel feeding and breathing tubes. 
 
 They also gave the parents hope. 
 
 According to Snyder, three Guatemalan doctors, including a neurologist, declared that the boy was not brain dead after all. 
 
 That diagnosis was based in part on EEG, or electroencephalogram, tests, used to measure electrical activity in the brain, she said. 
 
 Snyder declined to name the Guatemalan doctors or their hospital but dismissed the idea that their opinion weighed less than that of American doctors. 
 
 “We’re not talking voodoo here,” she told The Post. “They have access to the same equipment as American doctors. Many of them probably have degrees from American medical schools.” 
 
 From Guatemala, the family posted more videos in which they said Israel was improving. 
 
 “My son Israel is doing a lot better now that he’s getting the help he needed,” Nathaniel Stinson wrote on Facebook on June 8. “Kaiser is in big trouble for not treating my son.” 
 
 Then, after about three months in Central America, Israel suddenly returned to the United States. 
 
 Despite the pending death certificate, and possibly because of the EEG tests from Guatemala, he had been accepted as a patient at Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles. 
 
 Again, the family was jubilant. 
 
 “In the beginning we were told Israel would not make it past a month, they told us his organs would slowly shut down, they said if we fed him it would kill him, they told us to give up and let go,” they wrote. “But God had a different plan and he has never given up on us, Israel’s organs are functioning just fine and he is being well fed even gaining lots of weight and now he is stable enough to take home less than 5 months after the injury occurred. It just goes to show that Doctors are only human and God has the ultimate say.” 
 
 Within days, however, the new hospital also moved to take the boy off life support. Once again, the family sought an injunction. And on Aug. 11, they received a temporary restraining order blocking the hospital from taking Israel off his ventilator. 
 
 Then, on Thursday, came a final, sudden twist in the international medical saga. 
 
 A Los Angeles Superior Court judge removed the restraining order, saying the case had already been decided at state and federal level before the family traveled to Guatemala. 
 
 And with that, doctors turned off Israel’s ventilator. 
 
 “I heard them disconnect the ventilator and then heard, of course, a very grieving mother,” said Snyder, who was on the phone with Fonseca at the time. 
 
 “They’re understandably devastated,” she told The Post. “What happened today was just so awful. Obviously a young child lost his life, but the way it happened, the way the hospital went about removing his life support, is exactly what should never happen to any family anywhere in this country.” 
 
 “They killed him,” Kevin Snider told the Bee. He is chief attorney for the Pacific Justice Institute, a group that defends religious freedom and also represents Israel’s family. 
 
 Alexandra Snyder, from LLDF, called the judge’s decision “unexpected” and said she was in court with Fonseca just last week. She said the hospital should not have turned off Israel’s ventilator until the parents got to see another, “independent” neurologist and that one had already agreed, although she refused to give his name. 
 
 She also said Israel’s parents were not asking the courts to keep him in the hospital forever, but rather wanted to take him home, and that the hospital’s hands were not tied by Thursday’s court ruling. 
 
 “What I really don’t understand is why this hospital agreed to take this little boy in the first place,” she told The Post, saying the boy’s parents never would have brought Israel back to the United States if they had known the hospital was going to pull the plug. “They knew exactly what his condition was, what his treatment was, and they agreed to take him. But it appears they only accepted him as a patient to put him to death. … 
 
 “The irony is this little boy was cared for so much better in Guatemala than he was here,” she added. 
 
 Snyder said Israel’s parents, who also have a 1-year-old daughter, were too distraught to talk Thursday night. 
 
 “They are tremendous people,” she said. “The way they fought for their son was truly heroic.”
– One Life to Live fans are waking up to devastating news Thursday morning: Nathaniel Marston, the star who played Michael McBain on the long-running ABC soap opera, has died at the age of 40, People reports. Mom Elizabeth Jackson posted a heartfelt tribute to her son on Facebook Wednesday evening, informing readers that "my beloved and cherished son, Nathaniel Marston, who was putting up the good fight until last night was not able to continue due to the traumatic and devastating nature of his injuries. Nathaniel passed away peacefully as I held him in my arms." Jackson also noted doctors had done the best they could to save her son after the Oct. 30 car crash near Reno, Nev., that threw him from the car. "Had Nathaniel lived he would have required a ventilator and would never have been able to utter one more word and would have been sentenced to life as a quadriplegic. A condition that Nate would have never have been able to tolerate," she wrote. "By Gods [sic] love and mercy Nathaniel was spared this living hell and has traveled on to be with God." Jackson noted that memorial services would be held in NYC, Hawaii, and Nevada.