Shannon Price Can’t Afford To Pay For Gary Coleman Funeral

Just when you thought things couldn’t possibly get any shadier….

Gary Coleman’s ex-wife is hoping fans of the iconic child star will look into their hearts and dig deep into their wallets to help finance his weekend funeral.

Coleman died last Friday after a fall in the couple’s suburban Utah home left him with an intracranial hemorrhage. Shannon Price, the 24-year-old redhead Gary divorced in 2008, says she pulled the plug on the ailing Diff’rent Strokes actor because she didn’t want him to end up like Parkinson’s-stricken Muhammad Ali or late coma patient Terri Schiavo. Despite public scrutiny surrounding her lackadiscal demeanor in an emergency call placed the day of Gary’s fatal tumble, Price is forging ahead with Coleman’s funeral — and she hopes fans will help her raise funds to pay for the burial.

“Our life together has not always been the best financially, and right now I’m struggling to figure out what I’m going to do for funeral costs and I don’t know how I’m going to survive, it’s been really rough… because Gary hasn’t had much work because of his health. Our finances were great when I met him, he had a lot of work and a lot of projects, but now I basically have nothing,” Shannon said in a video interview with TMZ.com.

“He was never able to have life insurance because of his renal failure, his kidney disease, he was never able to get that – which is sad, because that could have helped with funeral costs and everything else. So I’m just wishing and hoping that people will pour out (sic) to us and show their compassion like they have been with the emails and letters.”

In another shocking turn of events, Gary’s estranged parents, Willie and Sue, — whom he had not spoken to in more than a decade — are seeking custody of his body and want it returned to the star’s homestate of Illinois for burial there, his former manager said Thursday.