Dr. Benjamin Brown, 41, of Restore Plastic Surgery, was arrested on June 17 and is being held at the Santa Rosa Sheriff’s Office Jail on charges related to the death of his wife, Hillary Brown, according to a press release from the sheriff’s office.
This is the latest development in an ongoing investigation into Brown. On May 2, the Florida Department of Health (FDOH) handed down an emergency restriction on Brown’s license.
According to a Santa Rosa County Sheriff’s Office incident report, deputies responded to Restore Plastic Surgery around 4:24 p.m., Nov. 21, 2023. Hillary was undergoing several procedures when she had a seizure and went into cardiac arrest.
A week later, while in a coma, Hillary was taken off life support as she had gone too long without oxygen to her brain. According to FDOH, her death is one of the reasons for the restriction.
“Dr. Brown also showed an extreme deficiency in responding to a medical emergency,” FDOH said when Brown’s license was restricted. “The level of disregard Dr. Brown paid to patient safety, even when the patient was his wife, indicates that Dr. Brown is unwilling or incapable of providing the appropriate level of care to his future patients.”
According to the police report, the medical examiner ruled the cause of death to be “complications following lidocaine toxicity.”
“In conclusion, witness interviews all corroborated that when the victim began to show signs of overdose Brown continued injecting unknown amounts of Lidocaine and did not stop until the victim went into a seizure and cardiac arrest,” the sheriff’s office report says. “When this occurred, Brown delayed the reporting of the incident to 911 and used his status as a doctor to do so, when it is required by law. Brown showed a history of allowing unsafe practice to occur and took no precautions for the well-being of human life, even after an incident where he could not wake the victim during a procedure in January of 2023.”
