The boy survived, but newly released records raise hard questions about hospital protocols, police observations and supervision around a backyard pool.
An Arizona toddler pulled from a backyard pool was pronounced dead at a hospital in February. Hours later, officials found him breathing in a hospital room used as a morgue, according to police records described by The Associated Press and published by CNN.
The child survived and has since been released from the hospital. Now the case has opened two separate lines of scrutiny: how an 18-month-old reached the pool, and how a child who was still alive ended up in a “cold room.”
A pool call turned chaotic
First responders were called to a home in Gilbert, a Phoenix suburb, around 5:30 p.m. on Feb. 8 after a reported drowning, according to the police records cited by AP. The toddler had been pulled from a backyard pool, and relatives made frantic 911 calls as people could be heard screaming in the background.
One caller reported that the child was unconscious. Emergency crews performed life-saving measures before taking him to Mercy Gilbert Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead about an hour after the initial call.
That pronouncement did not end the emergency. Police records say that roughly five hours later, authorities were notified the boy was breathing. He was then flown to another hospital.
The child ultimately survived. A fundraising page created for the family in February said he would need extensive therapy and referred to him as “baby Vincent,” calling him a “miracle fighter.”
Officers questioned what they saw
One of the most troubling pieces of the newly released records is that two Gilbert police officers reportedly noticed possible signs of life more than once. According to AP’s account of the documents, the officers raised concerns before the child was taken to the hospital’s cold room.
At one point, the records say, Dr. Aryan Toosi told an officer: “Please do your thing and let me do my thing. I went to medical school for a reason.”
An attorney for Toosi, Scott Holden, told AP he would not give a full statement on the doctor’s behalf, but said there was “much more to this case, both factually and medically, than has been reported thus far.”
Mercy Gilbert Medical Center said in a statement that 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 provide more details.
The “cold room” discovery
The boy was not found breathing by family members. Police records say a team from the local medical examiner’s office arrived in the cold room and discovered the toddler was alive.
That detail is central because it suggests the mistake was not immediately corrected after the death declaration. The child had already been moved into a space associated with postmortem handling when someone detected breathing.
Cases like this are rare, but they are not unheard of. AP cited the 2020 case of Timesha Beauchamp, a 20-year-old Michigan woman with cerebral palsy who was declared dead by a doctor over the phone and later found gasping for air at a funeral home. She died two months later, and Southfield, Michigan, later settled a negligence lawsuit filed by her family for $3.25 million.
Dr. Judy Melinek, a forensic pathologist who was not involved in the Arizona case, told AP that mistaken death declarations are uncommon and tend to happen more often among elderly patients than children. She said the criteria for death require no heartbeat, no breathing and no brain or neurologic activity.
Parents may still face charges
Separate from the hospital questions, Gilbert police are recommending negligence charges against the toddler’s parents, according to AP. That does not mean charges have been filed.
The Maricopa County Attorney’s Office said it was reviewing the case and declined further comment Monday, AP reported. Prosecutors will decide whether the evidence supports criminal charges, and the parents are presumed innocent unless charged and proven guilty.
Investigators said there was a strong odor of marijuana at the home and that open doors could have allowed the child unsupervised access to the backyard pool, according to the records described by AP. No one answered the door when an AP photographer went to the home Monday.
Those details matter because a child near-drowning case can become a criminal matter if investigators believe adult supervision, barriers or other safety duties were ignored. But the public record so far does not establish exactly who was responsible for watching the child at the moment he reached the water.
Why pool access is so dangerous
The case lands in a grim category of preventable danger. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention identifies drowning as the leading cause of death for children ages 1 to 4 in the United States.
For toddlers, the risk is speed and silence. A child can slip through a door, reach water and become submerged in seconds, often without the splashing or yelling adults expect.
Safety experts commonly emphasize layers of protection rather than a single safeguard. Those can include locked doors, four-sided pool fencing, self-closing and self-latching gates, alarms, close adult supervision and CPR training.
None of those broad safety principles determines what happened in Gilbert. But they explain why investigators focus so closely on open doors, barriers and supervision after a toddler is found in a pool.
The unanswered questions now
The most immediate legal question is whether prosecutors will act on the police recommendation. If charges are filed, the case could turn on what investigators can prove about access to the pool, adult awareness and the conditions inside the home.
The medical questions are just as serious. The public still does not have a complete account of what tests were performed before the child was pronounced dead, who made each decision, and what hospital policy required before moving a patient to a cold room.
The hospital says it reviewed the care and made changes, but it has not detailed those changes. The doctor’s attorney says more facts remain untold. Police records say officers saw possible signs of life.
For now, the child’s survival is the only clear relief in a story filled with institutional pressure points. A backyard pool emergency became a hospital crisis, and the next phase will determine whether it also becomes a criminal case.
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