Gary Coleman’s Ex-Wife Shannon Price Fails Lie Detector Test About His Death
Gary Coleman had a hard life, one marked by great success but also heartbreaking struggles.
Yet it was a life that the Diff'rent Strokes alum had planned to keep living.
"I haven't had the highest highs and the lowest lows yet. I'm still looking for that," Coleman told E! News in January 2010. "I got 40 years in me yet. I ain't going nowhere."
Instead, the child star-turned-object of pop culture curiosity suffered a fatal head injury following a fall at his Utah home. His ex-wife Shannon Price gave permission for the hospital to take him off life support and Coleman died at the age of 42 on May 28, 2010.
Price's continued involvement in Coleman's life after they divorced in 2008, his tragic and abrupt death, the photo of the pair in his hospital bed that landed on the cover of a tabloid and her ultimate decision regarding his care all combined to ensure there would be a lot of lingering questions about his final days—even a decade and a half later.
"I had no choice,” Price said on a July 2025 episode of A&E’s Lie Detector: Truth or Deception, referring to her decision to shut off life support for Coleman. "He had gone into cardiac arrest, and that is ultimately what took his life."
And, she told series host Tony Harris before her voluntary polygraph test got underway, “I’m here talking to you right now because I didn’t do a damn thing to him. I didn’t hurt him, I didn’t push him. I didn’t do any of that.”
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Price, now 40, has been saying as much since 2010, though there are still those who believe there's more to the story than Coleman fell, the end.
The 4-foot-8 actor "didn't have that far to fall," friend and former manager Dion Mial said in the 2024 Peacock documentary Gary. “We were absolutely stumped because there were way too many questions. With no answers."
But why did this turn into such a mystery? Here's what to know about Coleman's death and its complicated aftermath:
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What happened to Gary Coleman?
On May 26, 2010, Gary Coleman was transported to a local hospital after hitting his head in a fall at his home in Santaquin, Utah. He was moved that evening to Utah Valley Regional Medical Center in Provo.
His ex-wife Shannon Price later told Entertainment Tonight that she had been sick in bed and Coleman went downstairs to make her some food, when she heard a smack. “I was frantically panic stricken because I didn't know what to do," she said. "I didn't know what the extent of the damage was.”
His manager John Alcantar shared on the morning of May 28 that, while he had been “conscious and lucid” the previous morning, Coleman had slipped into a coma and was on life support with an intracranial hemorrhage.
Coleman died on May 28 at 12:05 p.m. after being taken off life support. He was 42.
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What was Gary Coleman’s cause of death?
Santaquin Police Chief Dennis Howard told People on May 29, 2010, that there was “absolutely nothing suspicious” about Coleman’s death.
The state medical examiner determined Coleman died of natural causes following an accidental fall, according to autopsy findings released in October 2010.
His death certificate also noted “chronic renal failure and complications” as significant conditions.
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What was said in Shannon Price’s 911 call about Gary Coleman’s fall?
Price told a 911 dispatcher there was “blood everywhere” and she was “gagging,” per a recording of the call obtained by TMZ days after Coleman’s death.
Price said in the call she couldn’t go back downstairs where Coleman was or drive him to the hospital because she couldn’t stand the sight of blood and was worried she might have a seizure.
“There’s just blood all over and I can’t do anything,” Price said, per the audio. She’d been sick, she added, and didn’t “want to be traumatized.”
She acknowledged to Entertainment Tonight in a June 2010 interview that she didn’t come off great.
“Nobody else would know what it was like to be in that situation until you're in that situation,” she told. “A lot of people didn't think I was there for him and so I would definitely have tried to fix what I had said in the call."
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Were Gary Coleman and Shannon Price still married when he died?
Coleman, 40, wed Price, then 22, on Aug. 28, 2007, two years after meeting on the Utah set of the movie Church Ball.
While Coleman’s death certificate listed him as married, per TMZ, and Price continued to refer to him posthumously as her husband, the pair divorced in 2008.
Price told ET in June 2010 that she and Coleman had filed for divorce “and everything went through,” but they’d since reconciled and had planned to renew their vows “very soon.”
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Did Shannon Price have the authority to make medical decisions on Gary Coleman’s behalf?
In response to questions about whether Price could legally authorize taking Coleman off life support as his ex-wife, the answer is yes.
Coleman had granted her permission in an Advance Health Care Directive (AHCD), according to Utah Valley Regional Medical Center.
The AHCD was also a private medical document, the hospital said in a 2010 statement, but “we received permission to confirm that the document was in effect at the time of Mr. Coleman’s death.”
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What has Shannon Price said about taking Gary Coleman off life support?
“The doctors advised me that he wasn’t going to make it,” Price told ET in 2010. “His heart was giving out, it was going to stop regardless. It was the most difficult decision I've ever had to make in my entire life. Seeing Gary in that circumstance... It was best for him to go and not suffer.”
Once the decision was made, “He was gone immediately,” Price said. “When they took him off, his heart rate went down to 60 and then when they turned the machines off, he was gone that quick.”
The last thing Coleman told her, Price said, was “‘I love you and my head hurts.’”
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What did Gary Coleman’s will say about life-saving measures?
The actor had a living will, obtained by CNN, stating that he wanted to be kept alive, unless he was in an irreversible coma for at least 15 days.
Price said on A&E's Lie Detector: Truth or Deception in 2025 that she did tell doctors to try to resuscitate Coleman when he went into cardiac arrest, “and they are like, ‘Shannon, we do not think he is going to make it.’”
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How was Gary Coleman’s health before he died?
The Zion, Ill., native was born with a congenital kidney disease that required routine dialysis. He underwent his first kidney transplant at the age of 5 and another at 14. His growth was stunted by side effects of immunosuppressant drugs and he never grew taller than 4-foot-8.
He took “so many pills a day,” Coleman told People, “you’d think I’d rattle.”
Coleman suffered at least two seizures a few months before his death, one in January 2010 and another Feb. 26 when he was mid-interview with Dr. Drew Pinsky for The Insider.
Price told ET in June 2010 that Coleman’s “body was failing him” before his fall.
He had heart surgery to replace his aortic valve in the fall of 2009, according to Price, and doctors predicted “he wouldn’t make it a year.”
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What did Gary Coleman’s estranged parents say about his death?
Coleman hadn’t talked to his parents Sue Coleman and Willie Coleman in years when he died. (The actor sued them in 1989, alleging they’d mishandled the money he made as a child star, which they denied. The two sides reached an undisclosed settlement in 1993.)
“We would’ve loved to have been there by his side at the hospital, to let him know we love him before he passed away,” Sue told People the day after her son died. “This is a shock to us. We loved Gary very much. We’re going to miss him.”
They also wanted to know “exactly what happened,” Sue said. “We’re not angry. We’re just concerned…We need to have some closure on our son’s life."
Willie told TODAY's Meredith Vieira on June 11, 2010, "We aren’t pointing any fingers, we have never pointed any fingers at Shannon."
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Who took a photo of Gary Coleman and Shannon Price in his hospital bed?
A photo of Price with Coleman in his hospital bed while he was hooked up to a ventilator was published on the cover of the Globe tabloid on June 9, 2010.
The magazine’s parent company confirmed to CNN at the time that it had purchased the photo, but did not disclose for how much or from whom.
Coleman’s friend and former manager Dion Mal alleged to the outlet that selling the photo was an “ongoing desperate attempt” by Price to profit from Coleman’s death.
In a statement to CNN at the time, Price’s rep neither confirmed nor denied that she took or sold the photo, but said that Coleman’s ex-wife needed money after assisting Mal with hiring an attorney.
"Dion, who claims to be a good friend of Gary, would know that Gary's only wishes were to make sure that Shannon would be OK after he was gone," the rep said. "So if Dion was a good friend he would be assisting Shannon.”
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What happened to Gary Coleman's estate?
A Utah judge had appointed Mal a special administrator of Coleman’s estate after a 1999 will was filed with the court naming him as Coleman’s executor. He subsequently had Price barred from the home she’d shared with the actor.
“Demand is also made upon Miss Price,” he said in a statement to ET, “to immediately return any and all of the personal items and/or documents of Gary Coleman's that she has confirmed that, indeed and without permission, she removed from the property, subsequent to Gary's untimely and mysterious death."
Days later, however, Mal dropped out of the running for control of Coleman’s estate after a 2005 will surfaced, per CNN, naming his former girlfriend and assistant Anna Gray his executor and beneficiary.
The court battle between Price and Gray over Coleman’s estate lasted until May 2012, when a Utah judge ruled Price had no legal claim to Coleman’s assets as his ex-wife.
Peacock
Did Shannon Price have a part in Gary Coleman’s fall?
Price has maintained that she had nothing to do with Coleman’s fatal fall.
“I did not hurt him,” she told Inside Edition in February. “I have nothing to hide.”
A rumor she pushed him down the stairs was “just B.S.,” Price said on Lie Detector. “I found him in the kitchen. When the police came and the EMTs came, he was still in the kitchen. What I think happened was, we had a kitchen island, and I think he had hit and fell.”
Since there “always needs to be a bad guy,” she said, the role apparently fell to her, “legally the ex-wife.”
“I was the one that was there that day that he fell,” Price added. “I was the only one that was in his life at that time. Nobody else was around…So that’s what sets me apart from everybody else. I cared about him. I loved him.”
A&E
What happened when Shannon Price took a lie detector test?
On Lie Detector, the former FBI agent who administered the test told Price she “failed the exam regarding Gary’s fall.” He explained that when she answered “no” to the question of whether she physically caused Coleman’s fall, the results found “deception indicated.”
Price was unfazed.
“I know where I'm at. I'm at peace,” she said on the show. “There is a reason I am not in prison. There is a legit reason for that. It's because they did a thorough investigation.”
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