The man at center of right-to-die case

PARIS - Once he was a rebellious teenager who became a psychiatric nurse in France. Then a 2008 road accident caused severe brain damage and today Vincent Lambert is the silent presence at the heart of an emotional right-to-die case that may be ending as doctors are set to begin removing life support.

Lambert had just turned 32 and was due to become a father when his life was changed forever by a car crash near his home in the northeastern French town of Chalons-en-Champagne.

In a vegetative state for the past 11 years, he has been the subject of a long-running legal battle between his deeply Catholic parents, who want to keep him alive, and his wife Rachel, who believes he should have the right to die with dignity.