At 6:20 p.m. on Super Bowl Sunday, the Arizona toddler was pronounced dead in the emergency room.
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At 11:52 p.m., the boy was found breathing in the hospital morgue.
What happened during that nearly six-hour period, and the circumstances that led to 18-month-old Vincent Lorenzo Fiordilino’s near-drowning in the pool, are now under investigation by the Maricopa County District Attorney’s Office.
“The child ultimately survived and has been released from the hospital,” the Gilbert Police Department said in a statement.
But the department also recommended that the district attorney charge his parents with child abuse.
The parents, according to a police report obtained by NBC affiliate KPNX in Phoenix, may not have realized their son had wandered into the pool while playing because of the “potential for both parents’ mental state to be impaired by marijuana and/or other mind-altering substances.”
“Both admitted to smoking marijuana on the morning of the drowning,” the report states.
A spokesman for the district attorney declined to comment on the case.
Meanwhile, Mercy Gilbert Medical Center confirmed it had conducted its own internal investigation into what it called a “heartbreaking situation.”
But the hospital has not disclosed the results of the investigation and declined to answer questions from NBC News about whether the doctor who mistakenly pronounced the boy dead remains on staff.
In the police report, this doctor is identified as A. Tusi. And when a police officer questioned him about his decision to declare the boy dead while the child was still suffocating, the doctor was allegedly stripped of his rank.
“Please do your thing and let me do mine,” the report quotes Tusi as saying. “I went to medical school for a reason.”
Available reports indicate that a doctor named Aryan Thusi was associated with this hospital. He referred NBC News to attorney Scott Holden.
In a statement to NBC News on Friday, the lawyer cited the police report and a potential case against the child’s parents.
“Because of this, as well as patient confidentiality, we are unable to make a full statement at this time other than to assure you that there is much more to this case, both factually and medically, than has been reported thus far,” he said.
Vincent, the baby, is not identified by name in the police report, but his family has set up a crowdfunding page to help with medical expenses.
“I can’t comment on that right now, but thank you for calling,” said the man who answered the phone at Vincent’s house before hanging up.
According to the crowdfunding page, Vincent is breathing using a ventilator. He avoided serious brain damage, but will require constant medical monitoring and extensive therapy.
The turn of events began around 5:38 p.m. on Feb. 8 with a call to 911 for help after the boy was found floating face down in the family pool and a relative attempted to resuscitate him by performing CPR, according to the report.
The boy was then rushed to Mercy Gilbert Medical Center’s emergency room, where the emergency team, which included Thusi, took over efforts to save him.
According to the report, at 6:13 p.m., Thusi was checking the time on a “mobile phone with an orange and black cheetah print case” before he went out to tell the boy’s parents the bad news.
A few minutes later, Thusi spoke with a Gilbert police officer, who seemed to question his diagnosis, and then returned to the emergency room.
“If there is no objection, I would like to give the time of death,” Tusi said, according to the report.
Then, “at approximately 6:20 p.m., Dr. Thusi announced the time of death and asked for a moment of silence.”
Vincent Fiordilino.via GoFundMe
But the child’s parents and police officers at the emergency room said in the report that the child was still gasping for air after he was pronounced dead.
Then, around 7:18 p.m., a detective on the scene reported hearing “another audible gasp” as emergency personnel prepared to move the boy from the trauma bay to the “cold room,” which serves as the hospital’s morgue and where the temperature is maintained at 36 to 39 degrees.
The same detective said that when he returned to photograph the body an hour later, he “again noticed what appeared to be a sigh or release of air.”
“The nurse again stated that it was agonal breathing and explained that this was due to compressions, oxygen, and possible pressure from family members while saying goodbye,” the report states.
And at 7:23 p.m., “the refrigerator door closed,” the report said.
More than four hours later, when a forensic team arrived to take the boy away at 11:52 p.m., he was “found to be breathing,” the report said.
“The family was immediately notified” and the boy was airlifted to Phoenix Children’s Hospital.