A Florida doctor accused of fatally removing the wrong organ from a patient was recently arrested while working a shift for Lyft — much to the horror of his vacationing passengers.
Thomas Shaknovksy, 44, was cuffed April 13 in Miramar Beach, Fla., on charges of second-degree manslaughter while carting around two customers in his silver Mitsubishi.
An officer with the Walton County Sheriff’s Office hauled Shaknovksy out of his car and handcuffed him while pressing the suspect against the back driver’s side window, where one of his stunned passengers was sitting, according to police body-camera footage obtained by NBC News.
Once Shaknovksy was in the patrol car, the officers pivoted and guided his two passengers to the side.
They explained that Shaknovksy was their Lyft driver and had picked them up from their hotel. They said that when the officers rushed toward the car with their guns drawn, they feared they were being robbed.
“That scared the crap out of us,” one of the passengers said.
The other rider said jokingly, “We’re not using Lyft again. From now on, we’re using Uber.”
Shaknovksy had been driving with the ride-sharing service for more than a year and maintained a five-star rating before his bust, according to a screenshot of his profile shared with the outlet. The account is listed under his middle name, Jacob.
A rep for Lyft told the outlet that Shaknovksy was “removed” from the platform once the company was made aware of his arrest.
Shaknovksy faces up to 15 years in prison if convicted of removing 70-year-old William Bryan’s liver instead of his spleen during an August 2024 laparoscopic splenectomy, causing the Alabama man to bleed to death on the operating table, the Walton County Sheriff’s Office said.
His medical license was swiftly revoked in the wake of the fatal mishap.
Shaknovksy had first allegedly pressured Bryan into the surgery despite the older man voicing his wish to return to his home in Muscle Shoals, Ala.
Bryan eventually gave in to Shaknovsky’s advice and agreed to have his spleen removed, according to an emergency suspension order viewed by The Post.
During the doomed surgery, Shaknovksy allegedly made a series of errors leading up to the fatal organ removal.
He allegedly converted the operation into a riskier open procedure, citing poor visibility in Bryan’s colon and abdomen. Then he snipped and stapled clumps of vessels around the liver, which triggered a severe hemorrhage and sent Bryan into cardiac arrest, authorities said.
Shaknovksy pressed on while the rest of his staff rushed to revive Bryan. He did not call for assistance when he removed Bryan’s 4.6-pound liver — which he identified as a spleen, officials said.
An adult male’s spleen typically weighs between 75 and 120 grams, or at most about a quarter of a pound, according to the National Library of Medicine.
Bryan was pronounced dead on the table. Shaknovksy insisted Bryan died of a splenic artery aneurysm, but his death was later ruled a homicide from “liver removed during splenectomy,” according to the family’s lawyer.
Shaknovksy already had a medical negligence lawsuit pending against him when Bryan’s widow sued him. The son of Dorothy Dorsett, 70, alleged that Shaknovksy failed to prevent her fatal sepsis after removing a mass from her during surgery, the lawsuit claimed.
Shaknovksy is scheduled to be arraigned May 19 in Bryan’s death.
