Late teen's stopped ventilator sent for tests
His family hopes for clues on death
Two days after Fernando Vargas died when his ventilator shut off during a power outage, his family yesterday was struggling to come to terms with his death.
When they muster the courage to return to his bedroom, his mother said, they hope to find clues about what happened.
"We'll do whatever we have to do, help out with any investigations, to get to the truth about why this happened, if the battery failed or malfunctioned," said Ilia Torres, Vargas's mother, in the living room of the East Boston apartment where her son died.
Boston police spokeswoman Elaine Driscoll yesterday said police believe Vargas's death was a tragic accident, not a criminal matter, though detectives were investigating the case.
She said they handed the ventilator over to the MassHealth contractor that had supplied the equipment to Vargas, apparently so it could be returned to the manufacturer.
It remained unclear yesterday if Vargas's ventilator was among more than 10,000 manufactured by Pulmonetic Systems Inc. before Sept. 1, 2003, and recalled a year later over the potential for the backup battery to malfunction.
Police said Friday that their preliminary investigation indicated the backup battery failed during a two-hour power outage that morning, but the device would be tested for the source of the malfunction.
On Saturday, a spokeswoman for New England Home Therapies, the contractor for the state's low-income health insurance program, MassHealth, that supplied Vargas's generator, said her company had retrieved the ventilator from police for delivery to Pulmonetic Systems for testing.
Driscoll initially said yesterday that the ventilator had been "sent out" for analysis by ventilator specialists but did not know if it was in the hands of the manufacturer or an independent investigator. Later, she confirmed that it had been given to New England Home Therapies.
Kim Tanzer, a spokeswoman for New England Home Therapies, confirmed yesterday that the company received the ventilator from police and sent it to Pulmonetic Systems for diagnostic review. She said she had no new information about the ventilator.
A spokeswoman for Pulmonetic, Donna Gaidamak, said yesterday that her Minnesota-based company had not been notified about any pending shipment of a malfunctioned ventilator from Massachusetts and had not been contacted by Boston police.
The Police Department's report did not include the serial number of Vargas's ventilator and battery, which would indicate if it was one of the portable ventilators recalled by Pulmonetic in September 2004 after about 30 reports that the backup battery malfunctioned in an external power shortage. Torres said she would look for information in her son's room that might further identify his Pulmonetic ventilator.
The company voluntarily recalled four ventilator models, including the
Shortly after that ventilator recall, Pulmonetic voluntarily recalled 1,129 new cable adapters that it had intended as a correction for the previous recall, because of reports that the adapter might not allow the ventilator to be repowered once the internal battery had been depleted.
Driscoll said the lack of a serial number in the police report did not mean that investigators did not have the number. She declined to elaborate. "It's under investigation, so we wouldn't provide that information," she said.
"Detectives need time to do their jobs and determine what went wrong," she said.
Vargas's mother and stepfather, Ariel Acevedo, were preparing for his cremation, scheduled for this morning, and a funeral Mass, which will be held Sunday at 10 a.m. at Mission Hill Church on Tremont Street.
Torres, speaking in Spanish, said she was thankful for the support from the community and from Mayor Thomas M. Menino. She said the city is paying for funeral arrangements for Vargas, a 15-year-old who was born with cerebral palsy, muscular dystrophy, mental retardation, and other ailments, and who had relied on a respirator and breathing tube since 2004.
"We've had tremendous support from friends and family and from people who we don't even know," said Torres, who moved with her son from Puerto Rico to the mainland shortly after his birth, to seek better healthcare services.
Outside their apartment yesterday, neighbors and friends had prepared a makeshift memorial, with candles, stuffed animals, and a poster that showed Vargas at his 14th birthday party. All over, people had written messages of love and remembrance.
Pulmonetic Systems has been in court in connection with the deaths of children who used its ventilators before.
A Camden, N.J., couple sued Pulmonetic and others after their 5-year-old son, Ajaron Millner, died in 2002, allegedly due to a ventilator malfunction. The company ultimately settled with the family for $5,000, according to court records.
A Hopedale, Ill., couple is suing Pulmonetic, alleging that a failed ventilator caused the death of their 2-year-old son, Quinn Kephart, last year.
In April, a Tazewell County coroner's jury found that the boy died in a local emergency room as a result of the ventilator failure, according to a local newspaper, The Pantagraph.
Ryan Emmett, a friend who speaks for the family, said yesterday in a phone interview that the toddler's death was not related to the backup battery, but a result of spontaneous changes to the ventilator's settings. In that case, police interviewed healthcare providers and others, and also retained the ventilator for testing, Emmett said.
"I know that the company that made the machine went to the police to try to get the machine back from them, and the police told them, 'We can't give that to you. That's evidence,' " said Emmett, who lives in neighboring Armington, in central Illinois.
Globe correspondent Christopher Baxter contributed to this story.
Clarification: A story in yesterday's City & Region section on Fernando Vargas, an East Boston teenager who died when his ventilator shut off during a power outage, said that Ryan Emmett speaks for the family of Quinn Kephart, a 2-year-old from Hopedale, Ill., who died because of a failed ventilator. Emmett is a close friend of the Kephart family who knows the details of the situation, but he does not speak directly for the family. 