Arizona toddler found breathing in morgue after near-drowning scare

An Arizona toddler was pronounced dead in an emergency room and found breathing in a hospital morgue nearly six hours later, a sequence that has pushed the case into a criminal review in Maricopa County.

The child, identified in reporting as 18-month-old Vincent Lorenzo Fiordilino, was found face down in the family’s pool at about 5:38 p.m. on Super Bowl Sunday, February 8, 2026. Police records say emergency responders took him to Dignity Health Mercy Gilbert Medical Center in Gilbert, where he was pronounced dead in an emergency room at 6:20 p.m.

Hours later, at 11:52 p.m. that same night, the boy was discovered breathing in the hospital morgue. Gilbert police said the child survived and has since been released from the hospital. The sequence raised immediate questions about how the case moved through emergency response, the emergency room and the morgue without the signs of life being acted on sooner.

ABC15 reported that a Gilbert police report showed two officers documented repeated signs of life before the child was moved to the hospital’s cold room. One officer wrote that the pronouncement of death was made in error. Those details place scrutiny not only on the final pronouncement, but on the handoffs that followed the pool rescue, including whether staff in the emergency department and morgue followed the necessary checks before a body was transferred.

The doctor identified in the police report is Aryan Toosi, an osteopathic physician whose listed work address is Chandler Regional Medical Center, part of the same hospital network as Mercy Gilbert. Public records reportedly show no disciplinary actions on his license. Mercy Gilbert Medical Center said it conducted an internal investigation and described the situation as heartbreaking, but it has not publicly released the findings.

Police recommended that the parents be charged with child abuse, and the case is now under investigation by the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office. A crowdfunding page for the family said the boy required ventilator support, had avoided serious brain damage and would need ongoing medical monitoring and extensive therapy. The case has become a rare and disturbing test of basic safeguards at every stage of a life-or-death response.