A hospital worker preparing a 22-month-old for a funeral home noticed the boy was breathing — more than an hour after he had been pronounced dead from drowning.
Logan Pinto apparently wandered away from his baby sitter Thursday and fell into a canal near his home in Rexburg, about 275 miles east of Boise. He was submerged for nearly 30 minutes before police found him a half-mile downstream, said Rexburg police Capt. Randy Lewis.
Though an officer gave him CPR and emergency workers did everything they could to revive him, Lewis said, the boy was pronounced dead when it appeared the effort had failed. After giving the boy’s mother and stepfather — Debra and Joe Gould — some time to say goodbye, Madison Memorial Hospital nurse Mary Zollinger began to prepare Logan’s body for the funeral home.
But when she looked at the boy, she noticed his chest was slightly moving and realized that Logan was alive.
The boy was flown to Primary Children’s Medical Center in Salt Lake City, where he was listed in critical condition Friday. Late Thursday, he was breathing on his own and his color had returned, but he was placed back on a respirator Friday, Lewis said.
“I’m just amazed and overwhelmed with what took place,” Lewis said. “They aggressively worked on him for quite a bit of time, and of course it’s a bad situation when you have to let the parents know that their son has passed away.”
But despair turned to joy when emergency workers learned the boy was alive.
“It’s called divine intervention, I think. I was dumbfounded. I couldn’t believe it hardly, especially after leaving there and seeing what had transpired,” Lewis said. “I don’t know how to explain it. It’s joyous and relieving.”