Nurse Sees Boy Breathe an Hour After He Was Declared Dead

A hospital worker preparing a drowned toddler for the funeral home noticed the boy was breathing -- more than an hour after he had been pronounced dead.

Logan Pinto, who is 22 months old, was listed in critical condition Friday but showing signs of improvement, Rexburg Police Capt. Randy Lewis said.

Logan apparently wandered away from his baby sitter Thursday and fell into a canal near his home in Rexburg, about 275 miles east of Boise. The child had been submerged for nearly 30 minutes before police Cpl. Colin Erickson found him half a mile downstream from the house, Lewis said.

Though a police officer gave Logan CPR and emergency rescue workers tried to revive him, Lewis said, all efforts failed and the boy was pronounced dead.

When Madison Memorial Hospital nurse Mary Zollinger began to prepare Logan’s body for the funeral home she noticed his chest was slightly moving.

The child was then flown to Primary Children’s Medical Center in Salt Lake City.

“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, Lewis said, when emergency workers learned Logan was alive.

“It’s called divine intervention, I think. I was dumbfounded,” he said. “I couldn’t believe it hardly, especially after leaving there and seeing what had transpired.

“With all the machines on, there was absolutely no vital signs, no nothing. They were trying to stimulate the heart with electric shock and nothing was working. So somebody intervened.

“I don’t know how to explain it. It’s joyous and relieving,” Lewis said.

The drowning happened when the baby sitter was distracted by some friends who had stopped by. Logan wandered into the unfenced back yard, which is bordered by the Rexburg City Canal.

The lower temperature of the canal water -- cooled by melting snow -- probably helped the child survive, Lewis said.

Rarely, children submerged in extremely cold water for long periods of time survive because the low temperature sends their body into a state similar to hibernation.

Children are more likely to survive such an event than adults because they require less oxygen.

Logan’s condition is still day to day, though other children have survived similar circumstances without permanent harm, Lewis said.

He said Logan’s mother Debra Gould and stepfather Joe Gould are on an agonizing roller coaster.

“They went through this devastating experience with the loss of their child, and then all of a sudden it’s relief and maybe there is hope,” Lewis said.

“We just hope that everything turns out. We don’t want to see them go through that again.”