Toddler found ‘gasping for air’ in morgue after being declared dead

A young boy declared dead was discovered breathing in a hospital morgue after being pulled from a pool.

The child’s grieving parents insisted they believed their son was still ‘gasping for air,’ but were ignored, a new police report reveals.

Two police officers at the hospital and a nurse had also questioned whether the boy was breathing.

The toddler has since been named locally as Vincent Lorenzo Fiordilino after a fundraiser was set up to help with his recovery and medical costs.

The 18-month-old boy, now nicknamed the ‘Miracle baby,’ was found unresponsive in the swimming pool of an Arizona home on February 8.

Little Vincent was discovered lying face down in the water during a Super Bowl gathering in the Phoenix neighborhood, the report says.

The boy was rushed to the Mercy Gilbert Medical Center, where he was seen by several medical professionals, but his condition was not discovered until he had been in the hospital cold room for hours.

It remains unclear what exactly happened in the moments after he was brought into the hospital as the boy’s medical records have been redacted.

Vincent was found at 6.20pm on the February Super Bowl Sunday, and found alive at 11.52pm, leaving an almost six-hour gap.

His parents said they thought their son was still breathing ‘based on the appearance of him gasping for air,’ the report notes.

Officers who said the same thing after hearing an ‘audible gasp’ told hospital staff, who labelled it ‘agonal breathing’ as gases and air left his body, the report says.

Moments before the doctor, named in the report as A.Toosi, declared him dead, one of the officers claimed hearing a nurse say ‘I have a pulse.’

When the officer informed the medic, he allegedly ‘arrogantly’ responded that ‘he was the doctor, he has the medical degree, he went to medical school for a reason, and to let him do his thing.’

Doctor Toosi said he would like to stop life-saving measures and call time of death if there were no objections, and no one in the room spoke out. He then asked for another pulse check before calling the time of death.

The doctor has apologized for his behavior, according to the report.

Mercy Gilbert Medical Center said last week it has carried out its own internal investigation into the incident. It did not respond to NBC News request whether the doctor who made the mistake is still working with them.

A medical transporter found Vincent breathing in the cold morgue room, and he was airlifted to a children’s hospital.

He faced a long road to recovery with ICU, MRIs, organ support and therapy, the fundraiser started in February said.

The police report claims that after the parents smoked cannabis, they failed to secure the garage doors which enabled Vincent to access the pool, and alleged that they didn’t properly supervise him.

The house is said to have been full of adults at the time of the incident who ‘collectively stated that each believed another adult was watching him,’ the report says.

The county attorney’s office is reviewing the case, and no decision has been made regarding charging the parents.

Through an attorney, the family declined to comment on a possible criminal case, adding that their son, now 22 months old, will need ‘lifelong care,’ according to ABC News.

Doctor Toosi’s attorney, Scott Holden, said in a statement that because of a possible case against the parents and due to patient confidentiality, he cannot make a full statement ‘other than to assure you that there is much more to this case, both factually and medically, than has been reported thus far.’

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