Organ Harvesting Claims Go Viral As Man Dies

The parents of a young Black man who died last week following a car accident have accused a North Carolina hospital of organ harvesting, according to a series of videos posted to social media.

Terrance “T” Howard, a 19-year-old college football, player died Thursday, more than a week after he sustained serious injuries after being struck by a moving vehicle on a highway.

RIP Terrance “T” Howard

He was driving to North Carolina Central University – an HBCU to which he had transferred from the University of Alabama – when he was in “a tragic accident right outside of Charlotte” on I-85, Howard’s father, Bishop Anthony Allen, said on July 24 in a Facebook video he filmed live.

Unsure of the exact scenario that led to the accident, Allen said he was told that his son “went to go render aid” to the other driver in the accident when a “car hit him from the back” and “knocked him about 30 feet.” Allen said his son “landed on his head.”

Speaking in religious terms throughout the video, Allen said the situation described to him sounded like something his son would do.

“He stopped and rendered aid because that’s the kind of person he is,” Allen said before adding later: “Terrance was injured while trying to be a good citizen.”

Allen said doctors declared his son to be “brain dead” and “on life support” and aid he and his family were “praying that everything that’s been wronged will be right.”

Allen blamed the circumstances on “the work of darkness” and “not the work of God” because Howard is “a good person.”

The video notably did not contain any accusations against the hospital.

It is unclear what happened to the driver of the car that allegedly struck Howard.

Two days later, on July 26, Allen’s tone was much more urgent but still optimistic.

“Right now we need your help,” Allen told his followers in another video filmed live on Facebook.

He said he and his family were exploring options to transfer Howard to another hospital because the Atrium Health Carolinas Medical Center treating Howard was “a disgrace.”

Allen claimed Atrium Health Carolinas Medical Center wanted to take Howard off of life support, citing hospital policy for such cases.

“We are not in agreement with that because we know he’s still here, he’s still alive,” Allen said in the video, adding that “a lot of hospitals are quick to pull the plug.”

He said the hospital had given the family a deadline, prompting them to launch a crowdfunding campaign to help raise money to pay to transfer Howard to another medical facility. As of early Sunday morning, the GoFundMe effort had nearly reached its goal of $50,000.

“We need him transferred,” Allen said in the video before emphasizing: “We have to move fast.”

Nearly a week later, the circumstances were much more dire, as Allen showed in another live Facebook video. This time, it was filmed from within Howard’s hospital room and showed his parents alternately performing chest compressions on their son as Allen alleged that a doctor “put something in Terrance’s IV to kill him.”

Allen said Howard was “fine and stable” when they arrived at the hospital on Thursday. But once they moved to transfer Howard, Allen said the hospital sent someone in his son’s room to administer unknown drugs.

“They want him to die,” Allen said in the video, claiming doctors “walked away” when the family asked them to help.

“They turned off the life support,” Allen said of the hospital while showing blank digital screens that were attached to the bed.

Allen continued filming separate live videos from his son’s hospital room, including one in which Howard’s mother suggested they were the victims of a sinister plot involving organ harvesting, an illegal practice defined by the International Society for Human Rights as “the selling and transplanting of the organs of victims.”

Howard’s mother said Mother claimed the hospital wanted “to kill my son because they want his organs” and accused doctors of “snickering and laughing” and refusing to help them.

“They want his organs,” Howard’s mother continued. “That’s what they told me in the beginning.”

In the final live video filmed Thursday, Allen’s family claimed the hospital tried to criminalize them.

The footage shows multiple police officers entering Howard’s hospital room and threatening to arrest the family for trespassing if they didn’t leave the premises.

“They all participated in killing my son,” Allen said as he and his family were leaving the hospital. “They let my son die.”

Allen said Howard had “a heartbeat” and was “breathing on his own” while lamenting how the police officers “ran us out of the hospital.”

A message seeking comment from Atrium Health Carolinas Medical Center was not immediately returned.

An organ harvesting trend?

None of the news coverage of Howard’s death makes any mention of the organ harvesting allegations.

There have been an increasing number of accusations of organ harvesting in recent years.

Just this past April, a lawsuit alleged that the University of Alabama and the Alabama Department of Corrections are, essentially, partners in organ trafficking after six families claimed their loved ones were such victims.

Alabama jail inmate Charles Edward Singleton was found dead without any organs at all, including his brain, according to court documents filed earlier this year by the family of another inmate who was found dead in an Alabama jail without his heart in his chest.

In 2021, the same year Singleton died, 25-year-old Illinois State University graduate student Jelani Day was found dead under questionable circumstances after going missing in the state. Day’s mother claimed her son’s body was found missing some of his vital organs as well as his jaw, which was reportedly “sawed out.”

While Day’s mother later recanted her statement about her son being found with missing organs, his siblings said they were “NOT taking organ harvesting off the table” but respected their mother’s wishes to not make that a focal point of the media coverage surrounding the suspicious death.

Illinois Rep. Bobby Rush ultimately requested a federal review of Day’s case.

“As I learned the details of Day’s case, I was reminded of the lynching of Emmett Till, whose body was found floating in a river in 1955 and still, decades later, no one has been held legally accountable for his death,” Rush wrote in a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray and U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland. “The circumstances surrounding Day’s death are strikingly similar to past lynchings of Black Americans, both male and female.”

Organ harvesting was also initially suspected in the death of Kenneka Jenkins, a teenager found in a hotel freezer in suburban Chicago in 2017. However, a local coroner determined Jenkins’ death was an accident while she was intoxicated.

Black mistrust of the medical system

The above cases took place as statistics show that Black Americans harbor widespread beliefs about medical mistrust within the community.

A Pew Research Center study published in June found that more than half of a survey’s respondents believe that the healthcare system was designed to hinder the health and success of Black people living in the U.S. The findings underscore how this mistrust acts as a significant barrier to addressing current racial health disparities in the United States and the persistent concerns about the historical mistreatment of Black patients by the medical community, alongside ongoing experiences of discrimination.

According to the study, 51% of Black adults feel the healthcare system was designed to hold back Black people to a great extent or to some extent.

In particular, 78% of Black adults believe the notion that medical researchers experiment on Black people without their knowledge or consent, with 55% believing such experiments occur today, the research found.

“Trust is hard to gain and easy to lose,” said Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, a researcher behind the study. “While there’s been enormous progress in putting in systems to make sure people are treated fairly, as well as prevent inappropriate research on people without their consent, people still are distrustful, and they’re distrustful because of the way the system continues to treat people in disparate ways.”