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BOISE, Idaho (AP) -- A hospital worker preparing a drowned toddler for the funeral home on Thursday noticed the boy was breathing -- more than an hour after he had been pronounced dead.
The 2-year-old boy, Logan Pinto, is in critical condition but showing signs of improvement, Rexburg Police Capt. Randy Lewis said Friday.
Logan apparently wandered away from his babysitter and fell into a canal near his home in Rexburg, about 275 miles east of Boise. The child was submerged for nearly 30 minutes before police found him a half-mile downstream, Lewis said.
Though an officer gave him CPR and emergency workers did everything they could to revive him, Lewis said, all efforts failed and the boy was pronounced dead.
After giving the boy's mother and stepfather -- Debra and Joe Gould -- some time to say goodbye, Lewis said, 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 child was flown to Primary Children's Medical Center in Salt Lake City, where he was listed Friday morning in critical and guarded condition. Late Thursday, he was breathing on his own and his color had returned, Lewis said, but he was placed back on a respirator Friday.
"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 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," he said. "I don't know how to explain it. It's joyous and relieving."
(Copyright 2004 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
