The Region - News from Jan. 16, 1986

An 81-year-old woman who lost a bid in court to have an allegedly unwanted life-support ventilator unplugged died peacefully in a Los Angeles nursing home, her attorney said. Mary Lawrence had been transferred to the unnamed facility last Friday from Intercommunity Medical Center in Covina, where she was hospitalized Dec. 1, attorney Richard S. Scott said, adding that the legal challenge to the ventilator on constitutional grounds was now moot. Hospital attorney Kenneth Stern said Lawrence, although deemed to be in her last illness, had improved sufficiently to be weaned from the respirator nearly two weeks ago and to be removed from the hospital last week. She had been diagnosed as suffering from chronic irreversible pulmonary disease.