Parents of an Arizona toddler found alive in a morgue hours after being declared dead plan to sue the doctor they blame for his brain damage.
Two-year-old Vincent Lorenzo Fiordilino was pulled from a backyard pool in Gilbert during a Super Bowl party on February 8, rushed to Mercy Gilbert Medical Center, and pronounced dead within minutes of arrival. Nearly six hours later, a medical transport worker lifting a sheet in the cold room found the 26-pound toddler moving his arms and legs and gasping for air.
His parents, Alexus and Angelo Fiordilino, say the false death call and the long stretch without care left their son with lasting harm. They are preparing a lawsuit against the doctor and the hospital, arguing that staff ignored clear signs of life while the boy still had a chance.
Vincent was discovered floating face down and foaming at the mouth. Angelo jumped in, pulled him out, and the parents started CPR before emergency crews took over and raced him to the hospital.
Alexus later described the panic of those first moments and the brief hope she felt once the ambulance doors closed.
“Angelo rushed over and jumped in the pool to get him out and we did CPR. We were desperate to save him,” she said.
“I begged anyone who would listen to save Vincent and once he got in the ambulance I felt a little relief because they would be able to do more there.”
At Mercy Gilbert Medical Center, that hope collapsed fast. The New York Post reported that Dr. Aryan Toosi told the parents the pH levels in Vincent’s blood were too high and too acidic to support life. Roughly 18 minutes after arrival, the doctor said it would be best to call time of death so the child would not suffer.
“He said ‘he would be suffering so I think it’s best if I call it [his death].’ That broke my heart to hear, so we decided to stop.”
Alexus said she and her husband made the choice no parent wants to face.
“I didn’t want him to suffer, so I looked at my husband and we made the decision that if he was in pain, it was probably best to let him go.”
Even as the family said goodbye, the picture did not match a child beyond saving. Three different family members heard breathing. When Alexus hugged her son and spoke into his ear, air came out of him. Angelo said the sound was not normal. Staff told them it was.
Police records described a more serious warning. While Dr. Toosi was in another room comforting the parents, a nurse told Officer Martin, “I have a pulse.” Emergency workers moved to revive the boy. When the officer went to the doctor with that information, the police report said Toosi brushed him off.
“Toosi arrogantly told [Officer Martin] he was the doctor, he has the medical degree, he went to medical school for a reason, and to let him do his thing.”
Dr. Toosi then returned to the emergency room, ordered staff to stop CPR, and called time of death at 6:20 p.m. Police bodycam audio captured the call. Authorities later identified the speaker as Toosi.
Alexus remembered the doctor’s manner as detached when he delivered the news that ended active care.
“I remember the way he sat down because it felt very nonchalant and blasé. He was almost laying back in his chair.”
After the pronouncement, the parents were given time to say goodbye and went home believing their son was gone. They were later called to the local police station to answer questions. There, a detective gave them news no parent expects after a death call: Vincent was alive.
A medical transport worker sent to collect the body, escorted by a security guard, found the toddler moving vigorously under a white sheet in the morgue. Family attorney John Brewer said the worker immediately recognized what he was seeing.
“He says ‘that child’s alive’ but the security guard with him claims the doctor says that’s normal.”
Brewer said the worker described Vincent gasping for air, an intubation tube dislodged and filled with fluid, and mucus covering the boy’s nose. The child had been left without care for close to six hours after the official death call.
Alexus has not been able to shake that image.
“It haunts me still to this day when I think about it. I hate that he went through five hours in a morgue by himself, struggling to breathe.”
Vincent was rushed to Phoenix Children’s Hospital and placed on a ventilator. His kidneys were failing and his liver was in shock before those organs returned to normal function. His mother said doctors initially could not measure the full extent of any brain injury because of swelling and told the family to wait with “cautious hope.”
The Fiordilinos say an MRI later showed significant brain damage from oxygen deprivation and that Vincent will need tremendous care for the rest of his life. That claim sits at the center of the case they intend to bring. Fox News reported a different medical picture in its account, saying later testing found no brain damage while still noting that the child requires ongoing therapy after the near-drowning. The conflict over the injury’s severity remains unresolved in public statements.
Brewer is not waiting for institutional spin. He argues the death call itself, and the failure of nurses to stop it, caused preventable harm.
“We believe that Dr Toosi’s actions directly caused this severe brain injury and not only that we are suing the hospital because of the nurses’ failure to say something. He showed extremely gross negligence and conscious disregard for human life.”
He added that surviving nearly six hours without care proved Vincent was still a viable patient when staff quit on him. “These parents were faced with the ultimate horrific decision of letting their child die or not based on false information,” Brewer said. He also claimed the hospital has continued to allow Dr. Toosi to practice and is trying to “brush this under the carpet.”
Alexus put the same charge in plainer words.
“If the doctor didn’t let his ego get in the way of doing his job, he would have listened to other people and Vincent would be okay.”
Scott Holden, the attorney for Dr. Toosi, issued a careful statement that offered sympathy and no clinical defense on the record.
“Dr. Toosi’s thoughts are with the young patient and family, and he wishes the child continued healing and recovery.”
Holden said the doctor’s work has been rooted in healing, safety, and comfort for the community, then closed the door on detail: pending litigation and patient privacy laws, he said, bar any discussion of the care provided.
A spokesman for Mercy Gilbert Medical Center struck the same privacy wall in comments carried with the family’s account: the situation was “heartbreaking,” the hospital could share no information about those involved in patient care, and patient safety remained its highest priority. In separate remarks reported by Fox News, a Dignity Health spokesman said the system immediately conducted a thorough review of the care given and would make changes to strengthen it, still without addressing the pulse report, the bodycam audio, or the hours in the morgue.
No criminal charges or formal findings of liability have been announced. The lawsuit the family describes has been promised, not detailed in public court filings in the available accounts. The nurse who reported a pulse, the transport worker who found a living child under a sheet, and the security guard who waved off the movement as “normal” have not been named in the public record provided.
What is named is hard enough. A toddler arrived with a chance. Relatives heard breath. A nurse found a pulse. A police officer carried that news to the physician in charge. Time of death was called anyway at 6:20 p.m. The boy then spent hours alone in a cold room until a transport worker refused to treat motion under a sheet as a routine trick of the light.
Alexus has already rejected the idea of a neat ending. “There’s no happy ending,” she said. She also said a competent doctor in the room that day would have changed the outlook of her son’s life, and that Vincent was neglected the treatment that might have done it.
When hospitals hide behind privacy language and lawyers talk past the bodycam, parents are left to force the record into the open. A death call is supposed to be the end of doubt, not the start of a six-hour nightmare in a morgue. If frontline staff saw life and the person with the medical degree ordered them to stop, the public is owed more than condolences and a closed file.
Families should not need a transport worker’s shock to learn their child is still breathing, and institutions that shrug at that failure should not expect trust to survive with him.