Mum wanted Christopher Reeve's life support turned off after accident

London, July 7 : Late Superman star Christopher Reeve's mother wanted his life-support machine turned off after he met with the horrific riding accident that left him paralysed.

Barbara Johnson, 76, tells The Sunday Times that the moment her son was thrown from his horse during a riding event and left with two shattered vertebrae was "the worst nightmare of my life".

She admits that when the doctors told her that Reeve would be paralysed from the neck down, her first reaction was that the life support system should be turned off because her son would not have wanted to live a life like that, reports Times Online.

"Dr John Jane [chief surgeon at the Charlottesville hospital] told me that, if he did survive, Chris would be paralysed from the neck down and might not be able to breathe on his own. I knew my son wouldn't want to live like that - he was a man of action, of adventure," she told The Sunday Times.

"I argued that Chris should be taken off life support. But the doctors and [his wife] Dana felt they should wait to see if Chris could express his own wishes."

After spending nearly a week in coma, Reeve woke up and he too wanted the machine turned off.

According to author Christopher Andersen whose unauthorised biography, Somewhere in Heaven, is soon to hit bookstores, this time it was Barbara who helped him change his mind.

Reeve would later undergo a pioneering operation to reconnect his spinal column that helped him recover feeling in 70 percent of his body.

The actor died four years ago at age 52 on October 10, 2004 from cardiac arrest caused by a systemic infection.

ANI