PHOENIX — A toddler discovered in a backyard pool in a Phoenix suburb in February was pronounced dead before being found breathing hours later in a room serving as a hospital morgue, according to recently released police records.

Two Gilbert police officers saw possible signs of life several times, but the boy was still taken to the hospital’s “cold room” after being treated by staff, documents state.

“Please do your thing and let me do mine,” Dr. Aryan Toosi told an officer at one point, according to the report. “I went to medical school for a reason.”

First responders were sent to the home around 5:30 p.m. on February 8 in response to a report of a drowning. They took life-saving measures before taking him to a hospital where the boy was pronounced dead about an hour later.

Approximately five hours later, police were notified that the child was indeed breathing and he was airlifted to another hospital. The boy eventually survived and was freed.

Gilbert police recommend filing neglect charges against the parents. Investigators said there was a strong odor of marijuana in the home and open doors that could have allowed unsupervised access to the pool. The Maricopa County Prosecutor’s Office said it was reviewing the case and declined to comment further Monday.

In calls to 911, two family members frantically reported that they had pulled the boy from the pool while people at the scene could be heard screaming. A caller reported the child was unconscious.

No one answered at the home where he nearly drowned when an Associated Press photographer knocked on the door Monday.

Mercy Gilbert Medical Center, where the 18-month-old boy was taken, said in a statement that the hospital conducted “a thorough review of all aspects of the care provided to learn what happened and make significant changes to strengthen our care.”

The hospital called it “a heartbreaking situation” and declined to reveal further details.

When a team from the local medical examiner’s office arrived at the so-called cold room, they found the boy breathing and rushed him to another hospital, police said.

Scott Holden, Toosi’s attorney, told the AP he would not make a full statement on the doctor’s behalf “other than to assure you that there is much more to this case, both factually and medically, than has been reported so far.”

A GoFundMe page, created in February to help the boy’s family with medical bills, said the boy would need extensive therapy.

“Thank you for your prayers, your kindness, and your support of baby Vincent, our miracle fighter,” the page reads.

An ABC affiliate in Phoenix, KNXV-TV, first reported the story.

There have been other cases of people found alive after being declared dead. In Southfield, Michigan, Timesha Beauchamp, a 20-year-old with cerebral palsy, was pronounced dead by a doctor over the phone in 2020. The city’s paramedics had responded to a 911 call at her family’s home.

Later that day, a mortician opened the body bag and found Beauchamp gasping for air. She was rushed to a hospital, but never recovered and died two months later. Southfield settled a negligence lawsuit brought by the family for $3.25 million.

Cases in which someone is mistakenly declared dead and later found to be alive are rare, but they do occur, said Dr. Judy Melinek, a San Francisco forensic pathologist who is not associated with the case. “It tends to be much more common in older people than in children or young children,” he said.

“The criteria for death require no heartbeat, no breathing, no brain or neurological activity,” Melinek said. There were times when people were breathing very shallowly or intermittently, so doctors had to wait a few minutes before making the statement, he added.

According to Melinek, determining death depends on the skill and training of the doctor, and policies can differ from hospital to hospital. “Either someone with no experience got involved or a policy failed,” he said. “Because people, once dead, don’t come back to life, that doesn’t happen.” ___ Associated Press reporters Ed White in Detroit and Wufei Yu in Phoenix contributed to this story.

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