Arizona toddler declared dead found breathing in hospital morgue

An 18-month-old Arizona boy who was declared dead after being pulled from a backyard pool was found breathing hours later in a hospital room used as a morgue, according to recently released police records.

The incident began about 5:30 p.m. on Feb. 8 in Gilbert, a Phoenix suburb, when first responders were sent to a home for a reported drowning. Relatives told 911 dispatchers the toddler had been pulled from the pool, and people could be heard shrieking in the background. One caller said the child was unconscious.

Emergency crews performed life-saving measures before taking the boy to Mercy Gilbert Medical Center. About an hour after the initial call, he was pronounced dead.

“If there’s no objections, I’d like to call time of death,” the doctor said, according to body-camera video obtained by KPNX-TV in Phoenix. “Time of death 18:20. Moment of silence.”

Police records say two Gilbert police officers saw possible signs of life multiple times, but the child was still taken to the hospital’s “cold room” after treatment by staff. At one point, according to the report, Dr. Aryan Toosi told an officer: “Please do your thing and let me do my thing. I went to medical school for a reason.”

About five hours later, police were notified that the boy was breathing. A team from the local medical examiner’s office had arrived in the cold room and found signs of life, police said. The child was rushed to another hospital by air. He survived and has since been released.

Mercy Gilbert Medical Center said it 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 the case “a heartbreaking situation” and declined to release further details.

Scott Holden, an attorney for Toosi, told The Associated Press he would not make a full statement on the doctor’s behalf “other than to assure you that there is much more to this case, both factually and medically, than has been reported thus far.”

Gilbert police are recommending negligence charges against the child’s parents. Investigators said there was a strong odor of marijuana at the home and open doors that could have allowed the toddler unsupervised access to the pool. The Maricopa County Attorney’s Office said it was reviewing the case and declined further comment Monday.

A GoFundMe page created in February to help with medical bills identified the boy as Vincent Lorenzo Fiordilino and said he would need extensive therapy. “Thank you for your prayers, your kindness, and your support for baby Vincent — our miracle fighter,” the page says. According to the fundraiser, which has raised about $20,000, doctors were “taking things slowly, allowing Vincent’s body to guide the pace of his recovery.”

KNXV-TV, an ABC affiliate in Phoenix, was the first to report the story.

Mistaken declarations of death are rare but have occurred in other cases. CBS News reported that a 74-year-old woman pronounced dead at a Nebraska nursing home in 2024 was found breathing at a funeral home two hours later, and a 66-year-old Iowa woman was found alive and “gasping for air” in a funeral home in 2023 after being pronounced dead at a nursing home.

Dr. Judy Melinek, a San Francisco forensic pathologist not involved in the Arizona case, told CBS News such cases are more common among elderly people than children. “The criteria of death require no heartbeat, no breathing, and no brain activity or neurologic activity,” she said. “It’s either someone inexperienced got involved or a policy failure, because people, once they’re dead, they don’t come back to life — that doesn’t happen.”