Son of 2nd patient who died after seeing Florida surgeon describes family's heartbreak

EXCLUSIVEU.S. newsU.S. newsSon of 2nd patient who died after seeing Florida surgeon describes family’s heartbreak: ‘It’s just not right’Dorothy Dorsett, 70, died more than a week after Dr. Thomas Shaknovsky performed surgery on her in 2023, according to court records. Listen to this article with a free account00:0000:00ShareAdd NBC News to GoogleApril 17, 2026, 1:37 PM EDTBy Matt LavietesWeyman Dorsett knew something went wrong with his mom’s surgery as he watched an ICU doctor review her medical charts.Subscribe to read this story ad-free Get unlimited access to ad-free articles and exclusive content.“I’ll never forget and it’ll never leave my mind, the look on that doctor’s face as he was reading through the files,” Dorsett, 53, said. “... He was just shaking his head, like: ‘what in the living hell is going on?’”His mother, 70-year-old Dorothy Dorsett, was in recovery after a surgeon removed a tumor from her digestive tract. But she was hardly eating and had an abnormally fast heartbeat, according to a lawsuit Dorsett later filed. She was moved to the ICU nearly a week after the surgery. “She just started really spiraling, pain,” Dorsett said. “She was not my mom.”She died days later, on Aug. 4, 2023.About a year later, another patient, William Bryan, 70, died after the same surgeon operated on him. The surgeon, Thomas Shaknovsky was arrested this week, accused of accidentally removing Bryan’s liver instead of his spleen, prosecutors said. Shaknovsky operated on both Dorothy Dorsett and Bryan at Ascension Sacred Heart Emerald Coast in Miramar Beach.Shaknovsky and his lawyer could not be immediately reached for comment. However, he has denied wrongdoing in Dorothy Dorsett’s case in court filings of his own, arguing that some of the allegations were inaccurate and that descriptions of Dorsett's care were incomplete. The lawsuit remains ongoing.Do you have a story to share? Email reporter matthew.lavietes@nbcuni.com or reach us at our tip line. The hospital did not...