Dr. Ben Brown performed multiple procedures on wife before her heart stopped

The parents and friends of the late Hillary Ellington Brown are not only mourning her loss, but questioning how her tragic death following a plastic surgery procedure could have happened in the first place.

Hillary's plastic surgeon, her husband Ben Brown, called Marty and Dixie Ellington two weeks ago, telling them to “get here as fast as you can,” because their daughter was in the hospital.

They left their home in Conroe, Texas, and hurried to Florida, where Hillary lived in Gulf Breeze with Brown and her three young children from a previous marriage.

The Ellingtons arrived to find the 33-year-old in a coma, with brain swelling so severe from lack of oxygen she was unable to recover. On Nov. 28, Hillary was removed from life support and her organs were donated.

Ellington was devastated and in shock that their beautiful, vibrant daughter, known for being “full of fire and energy” since she was a girl, was fine one day and dead a week later.

“We want answers,” said Marty Ellington, an engineer with a successful electrical business. “We haven’t been given answers. If it’s a mistake, it was a mistake, but it doesn’t bring my daughter back, you know. I don’t want his money. I don’t want anything. All I want is an answer because I think that we owe that to my daughter.”

How did Hillary Ellington Brown die?

According to Ellington, Ben Brown told them he had been performing several procedures on Hillary in his office, late on the afternoon of Nov. 21, when she suddenly went into cardiac arrest.

In a social media post from Nov. 24, Brown wrote about his wife’s coma.

“We need prayers for a miracle. Hillary had a cardiac arrest on Tuesday afternoon,” Brown wrote. “We called 911 and started CPR. Her heart came back but her brain is not doing well. She has been in a coma since she went unconscious on Tuesday. Hillary Ellington Brown you are my soulmate, my world, my everything. Please come back. Please!”

The post was accompanied by a praying hands emoji and dozens of pictures of Hillary Brown, some with her husband, others with her children. In one picture of Hillary with her dog, Brown drew a heart around his wife’s face with an arrow pointing to one of her breasts.

According to a Santa Rosa County Sheriff’s Office incident report, Brown called 9-1-1 from his Restore Plastic Surgery office in the Tiger Point area of Gulf Breeze around 4:15 p.m., on Nov. 21.

The call notes stated there was a female in cardiac arrest: “DR POSS OVER MEDICATED PATIENT.”

“I interviewed the medical technician (name redacted) who advised the patient is Hillary E. Rogers Brown, who is currently Dr. Brown’s spouse,” a deputy wrote. “Hillary Brown was in the process of several surgical procedures when she experienced several seizures and then went into cardiac arrest.”

The Santa Rosa Sheriff’s Office Major Crimes Unit and the District One Medical Examiner are now investigating Hillary’s death. The sheriff’s office released a statement about the case, Tuesday.

“In accordance with our policies and procedures, SRSO investigators frequently conduct death investigations when the death was unexpected or the death occurs under unusual circumstances,” the statement read. “The cause and manner of death is pending the receipt of the autopsy protocol from the District One Medical Examiner’s Office. The autopsy protocol typically takes several months as it usually is dependent on extensive laboratory and toxicology tests as well as the information gathered by our Major Crimes detectives concerning the circumstances of the death.”

Ellington has a lot of questions about his daughter’s death, including what drugs she was given before the procedure.

"He said that the medicine they usually use, they were out of, so he used something different," Ellington said.

He also wants to know why there wasn't a crash cart, which holds life-saving equipment like oxygen and defibrillators at the office, along with properly trained medical staff who could have helped.

“With the amount of swelling in her brain that means her brain suffered from lack of oxygen for quite some time,” Ellington said. “That's telling me that when you got, not an EMT, not a nurse, not even a doctor, but a surgeon who wasn’t skilled enough in CPR that he could keep her oxygenated and keep oxygen to her brain until the EMT can get there. That just floors me that he falls out and they can't keep her, keep adequate oxygen in her because had that simple task (of giving her oxygen) been done, she'd still be with us.”

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Trouble at home and Restore Plastic Surgery office

Ben and Hillary Brown started dating in 2021, according to his social media, and they married in June 2022. She has three young children, ages 4 to 8, from a previous marriage, and he has two sons. Ellington said Hillary and Brown had a “volatile” relationship that sometimes blew hot then cold, but for the most part Hillary enjoyed their life together, especially having her husband regularly perform plastic surgery procedures on her face and body.

“She was gorgeous. We kept telling her, ‘Why are you doing this?’" Ellington said of their conversations.

She would tell him, "‘Well, because so ‘n so had it done, and I want it done.’ ‘Yeah, but you’re already naturally beautiful,’" Ellington said he told his daughter, "‘You don't even look the same,’ but I guess once you get into that lifestyle it captures you.”

He didn’t think that lifestyle would kill her.

Hillary’s father and friends said there had been indications Brown was unhappy in her marriage, but that she was reluctant to leave and wanted to make their relationship work.

In March, SRSO responded to a call at the couple’s waterfront home in Tiger Point Village in “reference to a suicide.” According to the report, Brown told dispatch his wife was “barely conscious and still unresponsive due to self-medication with an unknown amount of Valium.”

The deputy reported that Hillary admitted to taking Valium but denied wanting to hurt herself, saying she wanted her husband to know “she was serious.”

Hillary was evaluated by EMS and released without treatment, but the officer determined Hillary met the criteria for Baker Act and she was taken to the hospital for evaluation.

Ellington and Hillary’s friends say she was a loving, devoted mother who didn’t want to put her children through another divorce but she was not one to “back down from a challenge” even when they said she sometimes struggled with the “intense” relationship she had with Brown.

Dr. Ben Brown faced history of complaints

Brown has faced a number of complaints and allegations of botched procedures. There is an ongoing medical malpractice lawsuit pending against him for negligence. The plaintiff alleged she suffered a serious infection and debilitating complications after Brown used “foreign materials” during a breast reconstruction surgery without her consent.

Numerous other women have come forward to the News Journal with similar complaints, both on and off the record. According to Brown’s practitioner profile on the Florida Department of Health’s website, his license is clear and active and says he “has not had any final disciplinary action taken against him within the last 10 years by a licensing agency.”

The News Journal reached out to Brown and the Florida Department of Health for comment, but messages have not been returned.

According to the Santa Rosa Sheriff’s Office, deputies responded to a welfare check at Brown’s home on Dec. 2, and he was determined to be “OK.”

In the meantime, Marty Ellington and his wife are preparing to lay their daughter to rest. There will be a memorial service for her locally as well as in Oxford, Mississippi, where the family is originally from, and Hillary’s children will live with their father.

The family is focused on comforting Hillary's children, but they are also thankful for the support their daughter received from the Gulf Breeze community.

“I want to thank everybody fighting for her,” said Ellington. “The problem I have is I don't get answers and for the rest of their life I've got friends and family and their children asking me, ‘Why?’ Because I’m the father. I'm supposed to have an answer and I can't get anybody to give me an answer.”

This article originally appeared on Pensacola News Journal: What happened to Dr. Ben Brown's wife? His wife's family wants answers