The mother of a toddler found alive in an Arizona hospital morgue in February more than five hours after he was pronounced dead said Wednesday she thought she heard him breathing when she hugged him goodbye.But instead of listening to her gut, Alexus Fiordilino said, she believed the doctor who told her those were 18-month-old Vincent’s last gasps and that any further attempts to save him would just prolong his agony.“As a mom you don’t want to hear that,” Fiordilino, 30, said in an interview.“I didn’t want him to suffer.
It seemed to be they’d done everything they could.And then he called it.”Fiordilino was referring to Dr.
Aryan Toosi, who pronounced Vincent dead at 6:20 p.m.on Super Bowl Sunday at Mercy Gilbert Medical Center in Gilbert, Arizona.A little over five hours later, Fiordilino said, police were questioning her and her husband, Angelo, when a detective burst into the room and told them that a medical examiner’s employee who had come to collect Vincent’s body had discovered he was still alive.“My husband and I just screamed in relief,” she said.
“We were praising the Lord.We were crying.
To go from hearing he was gone and then finding out he isn’t gone, it’s an unexplainable feeling.”Fiordilino spoke out more than eight months after her son’s remarkable story of survival after he nearly drowned in the family swimming pool made national headlines and sparked multiple investigations into what happened on Feb.8.The Gilbert Police Department had recommended filing child abuse charges against both parents for losing track of Vincent while a Super Bowl party was going on at their residence.“Both admitted to smoking marijuana the morning of the drowning,” the police report said.But Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell announced in July that the Fiordilinos would not be charged.Fiordilino’s lawyer, John Brewer, said he plans to file a formal complaint this week against Toosi and the hospital.
He said a review of V...