Jacques Billeaud
Phoenix: A toddler discovered in a backyard pool in a Phoenix suburb in February was declared dead before being found breathing hours later in a room that serves as the hospital morgue, according to recently released police records.
Two Gilbert, Arizona police officers saw possible signs of life multiple times, but the child was still taken to the hospital’s “cold room” after being treated by staff, according to the documents.
“Please do your thing and let me do my thing,” Dr Aryan Toosi told an officer at one point, according to the report. “I went to medical school for a reason.”
First responders were dispatched to the home at about 5.30pm (Arizona time) on February 8 in response to a reported drowning. They performed life-saving measures on the child before taking him to hospital, where the boy was pronounced dead about an hour later.
About five hours later, police were notified that the child was indeed breathing, and he was flown to another hospital. The boy ultimately survived and has been released.
While not named in the police report, NBC News and other US media have identified the child as 18-month-old Vincent Lorenzo Fiordilino.
Parents face scrutiny
Gilbert police are recommending negligence charges against the parents. Investigators allege there was a strong smell of marijuana at the home and open doors that could have allowed unsupervised access to the pool.
The Maricopa County Attorney’s Office said it was reviewing the case and declined further comment on Monday (US time).
In 911 calls, two relatives frantically reported that the child had been pulled from the pool, as people at the scene could be heard shrieking. One caller reported that the toddler was unconscious.
No one answered at the home where the near-drowning occurred when an Associated Press photographer knocked there on Monday.
Mercy Gilbert Medical Centre, where the 18-month-old was taken, said in a statement that the hospital conducted “a thorough review of all aspects of the care provided to learn what happened and to make meaningful changes to strengthen our care”.
The hospital called it “a heartbreaking situation” and declined to release further details.
When a team from the local medical examiner’s office arrived in the so-called cold room, they found the boy breathing and rushed him to another hospital, police said.
Lawyer says there’s more to know
Scott Holden, an attorney for Toosi, told AP that he wouldn’t make a full statement on behalf of the doctor “other than to assure you that there is much more to this case, both factually and medically, than has been reported thus far”.
A GoFundMe page, created in February to help the boy’s family with medical bills, said the toddler would need extensive therapy.
“Thank you for your prayers, your kindness and your support for baby Vincent – our miracle fighter,” the page says.
An ABC affiliate in Phoenix, KNXV-TV, was the first to report the story.
Cases in which someone is mistakenly declared dead and later found to be alive are rare, but they do happen, said Dr Judy Melinek, a forensic pathologist in San Francisco who is not associated with the case. “It tends to be much more common in elderly people than in children or toddlers,” she said.
“The criteria of death require no heartbeat, no breathing and no brain activity or neurologic activity,” Melinek said. There were times when people were breathing very shallowly or intermittently, so medical practitioners had to wait a few minutes before the declaration, she added.
According to Melinek, determining death depends on a doctor’s skill and training, and policies may differ from hospital to hospital.
“It’s either someone inexperienced got involved or a policy failure,” she said. “Because people, once they’re dead, they don’t come back to life – that doesn’t happen.”
AP
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