'WE ARE BROKEN'

Doing a TikTok challenge reportedly left him in a coma - now his parents had to say goodbye as his life support was turned off

- MAXINE PETERS

ARCHIE Battersbee loved to be active, taking part in mixed martial arts and gymnastics. But like most kids his age, the 12-year-old also spent many hours on TikTok, engaging with the bil lions of videos on the hit social-media app.

But that app could have been the reason Archie ended up comatose and at the centre of a heartrending legal battle to keep him alive, his mom, Hollie Dance, believes.

Hollie and Paul Battersbee of Essex in the UK lost the fight to keep their child on life-support machines and had to say goodbye when those machines were recently turned off. “Such a beautiful little boy and he fought right until the very end,” Hollie says. “We are broken.”

Archie’s parents believe he took part in the blackout challenge that went viral on TikTok. The dangerous online craze encourages users to choke themselves until they reach the point of losing consciousness.

Hollie thinks this is what Archie tried – she found her son on 7 April with a dressing gown cord wrapped around his neck.

Doctors confirmed the 12-year-old’s brain stem, the area where the brain meets the spinal cord, wasn’t functioning. It contains crucial nerve centres for controlling basic functions, including those that control breathing and awareness.

For four months, several doctors at The Royal London Hospital kept him alive with artificial respiration, medication to regulate his bodily functions and round-the-clock nursing care.

But experts declared it was “highly likely” Archie was brain-stem dead – with no chance of recovery – and it was in his best interest for life support to end.