"He is No Longer The Same Baby" Baby Found Alive in The Morgue
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| Vincent Fiordilino, in a photo before Feb. 8. He was found that evening floating facedown in a swimming pool at the family home and was brought to the hospital to receive treatment.GoFundMe |
New York Times
The mother of a toddler who was pronounced dead at an Arizona hospital in February, then found to be alive hours later in a morgue, is speaking out about her family’s ordeal and raising questions about the care her son received that night.
The mother, Alexus Fiordilino, said in an interview this week that she, her husband and her mother-in-law were at the hospital saying their final goodbyes to her son, Vincent, who was 18 months old at the time, when they thought that maybe “he was trying to breathe.” He had been found unresponsive in a backyard swimming pool hours earlier.
“As I was hugging him,” she said, “air came out of him.”
When they told a police officer and a member of the hospital’s medical staff that Vincent appeared to be exhaling, they were told that it was “agonal breathing,” or “the final death breath,” Ms. Fiordilino said.
“That’s what they confirmed with us over and over,” she added, referring to the medical staff at Dignity Health Mercy Gilbert Medical Center in Gilbert, Ariz., a suburb southeast of Phoenix.
Eight months later, Vincent is unable to walk, talk, sit up or swallow, and is fed through a G.I. tube, Ms. Fiordilino said.
The family’s lawyer, John B. Brewer, said he planned to file a lawsuit as soon as next week. He contends that if Vincent had continued to receive care over the roughly four hours that he was in the morgue, the effects on his health could have been significantly less severe.
The Gilbert Police Department forwarded the case to the Arizona attorney general’s office for review. A spokesman for the attorney general’s office, Richie Taylor, said in an email that it had not yet decided whether to pursue the case.
In July, the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office announced that Ms. Fiordilino and her husband, Angelo, would not face charges. The office said the family “had multiple childproof locks and safety measures in place, and multiple adults were present in the home, all of whom believed someone was watching the child.”
Scott Holden, a lawyer for the doctor in charge of Vincent’s care, Aryan Toosi, and Abby Kay, a spokeswoman for Dignity Health, said in emails that they could not discuss patient care because of patient privacy laws — and, in Dr. Toosi’s case, because of “pending litigation,” Mr. Holden said.
“Dr. Toosi’s thoughts are with the young patient and family, and he wishes the child continued healing and recovery,” Mr. Holden said. “His commitment to delivering high-quality care has always been rooted in a desire to provide healing, safety and comfort to his community.”
In the early evening of Feb. 8, Vincent wandered out of his parents’ sight during a Super Bowl gathering at the family home in Gilbert and was found floating face down and unresponsive in the family’s backyard pool, according to police reports. It is unknown exactly how long Vincent had been in the water, but the reports note that family members said he might have been in the pool for 10 to 15 minutes before being found.
The Fiordilinos took turns performing CPR until the police and emergency medical workers arrived around 5:40 p.m., according to the police reports. After they failed to revive Vincent, he was taken to the emergency department at Mercy Gilbert Medical Center, where medical workers attempted lifesaving measures.
ImageA woman in a dark top sits at a table with her hands in front of her.
“As I was hugging him, air came out of him,” Alexus Fiordilino said, recalling the moment when she thought she was saying a final goodbye to Vincent in a hospital in Gilbert, Ariz.Credit...Patrick Breen/The Republic /USA Today Network via Imagn Images
After several minutes, Dr. Toosi left the area where Vincent was being treated, according to the reports.
Around that time, a nurse said, “I have a pulse.” A police officer who was present went to inform Dr. Toosi, who was talking to Vincent’s parents. Dr. Toosi replied, “Please do your thing and let me do my thing; I went to medical school for a reason,” the reports said.
Dr. Toosi then walked to the room where members of his staff were still performing lifesaving measures and listed aloud the treatments the child had received, noting that Vincent had blood gas levels showing “a pH balance incompatible with life,” according to the reports, which paraphrased Dr. Toosi. The doctor then conducted a final pulse check.
“As long as there are no objections, I’d like to call the time of death,” Dr. Toosi said, according to the reports.
No one spoke up, the reports said, and at 6:20 p.m. Dr. Toosi called the time of death and asked for a moment of silence.
Several minutes later, an officer who was present heard what sounded like “gasping” and asked a nurse about it. The nurse said it was agonal breathing, according to the reports.
Vincent was moved to the morgue between 7:18 p.m. and 7:23 p.m., the reports said. At around 11:30 p.m., an employee of the medical examiner’s office in Maricopa County arrived to retrieve the boy’s body and observed that he was still alive. Vincent was then airlifted to Phoenix Children’s Hospital.
The family believes that the hours in the morgue in which Vincent was left without care contributed to the child’s current health outcomes, according to Mr. Brewer.
Ms. Fiordilino and her lawyer said in the interview that Vincent, now 2, would require lifelong care.
“He can understand his name, but that’s kind of it,” Ms. Fiordilino said. “He’s not the same baby.”
Before the accident, Vincent was “very rambunctious,” Ms. Fiordilino said. “He loved to climb on everything,” she added.
“He used to say ‘hi’ all over the place,” she said. “And he had actually just learned ‘bye’ right before this. So I heard him say ‘bye’ one time.”
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