Florida Boy Dies While Waiting for Fourth Liver

Ronnie DeSillers, the plucky 7-year-old Florida boy who received three liver transplants after an outpouring of support from President Reagan and thousands of Americans, died Wednesday while waiting for a fourth transplant.

“Ronnie is going to be in heaven,” a teary-eyed Maria DeSillers, his mother, said at Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh, where Ronnie had been waiting for the fourth transplant. “God is going to be with him.”

Ronnie died of cardiac arrest at 8:15 p.m. in the intensive-care unit, said DeSillers, who was flanked by her fiance and brother.

‘Went Like a Champion’

“We kept talking to him and tears would come out of his eyes,” DeSillers said. “He kept on fighting. He went like a champion. . . . I miss him already.”

In Washington, the White House issued a statement saying President and Nancy Reagan had kept the boy in their prayers.

“The White House is saddened to hear of his death and extends its deepest sympathy to his family,” the statement said.

Earlier Wednesday, Reagan proclaimed April 26-May 2 as National Organ and Tissue Donor Awareness Week, urging Americans to “think about signing organ and tissue donor cards.”

Miami Beach industrialist Victor Posner, who had donated $200,000 toward Ronnie’s surgery, planned to send a private plane to Pittsburgh today to bring the boy’s body and his family back to Florida.

‘A Great Sadness to Us’

“His death comes as a great sadness to us,” said Posner spokeswoman Renee Mottram. “Mr. Posner has a great affinity for children and he’s very saddened by Ronnie’s death.”

The boy’s condition took a drastic turn for the worse Sunday night, a day after he was placed back on the waiting list for a fourth transplant. The third liver, which Ronnie received April 23, never began to function properly, hospital officials said.

Reagan had contributed $1,000 toward Ronnie’s first transplant after $4,000 raised by his schoolmates was stolen from his Fort Lauderdale, Fla., school. By the time the boy arrived with his mother at Children’s Hospital on Feb. 17 for the first transplant, which he underwent Feb. 24, an estimated $400,000 had been raised.

Ronnie received his second donor liver April 3 after a viral infection damaged his first transplanted organ and spread to his lungs. The second transplant was complicated by excessive bleeding.

Ronnie’s second and third donor livers came from children of comparable size but with different blood types. Surgeons decided to proceed with the transplants, preferring the slight risk of crossing two types of blood over the greater risk of waiting for another donor with Ronnie’s relatively rare AB blood.