Snowboarder, 14, Dies a Week After Rescue

In a heartbreaking reversal of fortune, a 14-year-old snowboarder who survived a six-day ordeal in the storm-racked San Gabriel Mountains succumbed to the silent ravages of infection from his injuries, hospital authorities said Saturday.

Jeff Thornton, who had experienced increasingly severe breathing difficulties for about 24 hours, went into cardiac arrest about 10 p.m. Friday. Efforts to revive him failed, and he was pronounced dead at 10:39 p.m., according to officials at Loma Linda University Medical Center.

His doctors said infection that set in from his injuries--frostbite on his legs, arms and hands, dehydration, broken bones and an eye injury--had overwhelmed the ninth-grader from Brawley. The youth had gone without food and endured several winter storms and subfreezing temperatures as he struggled alone after being lost two weeks ago about 6,000 feet high in the rugged mountains.

However, the San Bernardino County coroner’s office attributed his death to a medical procedure.

The coroner said in a news release that the boy died as the result of “perforation of right cardiac atrium due to vascular cannula due to extracorporeal membrane oxygenation.”

The coroner’s office refused to comment on its findings. But medical experts at other hospitals who are familiar with similar cases said the report indicated that Thornton died during a last-ditch effort to save his life.

Fifteen minutes before the youth died, Loma Linda physicians hooked him up to a heart-lung machine, which would add oxygen to the blood. To achieve this, the doctors inserted two thin tubes, called cannula, through blood vessels to the heart--one to withdraw the blood and one to pump it back in.

One of these tubes punctured the right atrium, or pumping chamber, of Thornton’s heart, the coroner said. Experts said his heart would no longer be able to pump blood effectively and blood would drain into the chest cavity. Because he was so severely ill to begin with, physicians were not able to revive him.

Dr. Andrew Hopper, a Loma Linda neonatologist who performs the oxygenation procedure, said it was the only possibility of saving the boy’s life and said the coroner should not have called the procedure the cause of death.

“I think if he wasn’t on [extracorporeal membrane oxygenation] he would have had cardiac arrest anyway, and the same outcome would have resulted,” he said.

Hopper said the cannula probably tore through the heart--from the inside out--during resuscitation. It could not be quickly removed, he said. “Our feeling is what the coroner is finding is the result of aggressive cardiac massage” that effectively occurred when death was inevitable, he said.

Physicians said that on the day Thornton died, his blood was not carrying enough oxygen to nourish his brain and muscles, and his heart was not pumping strongly--both problems caused by the bacterial infection.

What the boy “went through in the mountains took a big toll on his body,” pediatric intensive care specialist Dr. Shamel A. Abd-Allah said.

“We are all amazed at the rapidity of this disease, how he was doing well and then not so well. . . . These infections can be overwhelming,” he said.

Abd-Allah and another physician, Dr. Takkin Lo, said they treated Thornton, who had developed some gangrene from the frostbite, with broad-spectrum antibiotics and oxygen. The youth was transferred to the pediatric intensive care unit Thursday night for breathing problems. On Friday morning, he underwent exploratory surgery to find and try to clear any pockets of infection on his gangrenous feet, Abd-Allah said. But his condition deteriorated throughout the day.

“We attempted resuscitation with aggressive CPR for an extended period of time, but we were unable to get him back,” the physician said.

Thornton’s family did not speak with reporters Saturday but issued a brief written statement.

“After the elation felt upon Jeff being found, the despair of now losing him has devastated his family and friends.” The statement went on to thank “everyone for their continued prayers and support.”

Word of Thornton’s death stunned rescuers and others who had followed the story of his Feb. 7 disappearance while snowboarding with his uncle and his near-miraculous rescue six days later. Searchers found him dazed and cold but with seemingly few serious injuries, sitting beside a creek about two miles from where he was last seen, the New Mountain High ski area near Wrightwood.

The initial reports were optimistic at Foothill Presbyterian Hospital in Glendora, where the youth was treated for the first 24 hours after his rescue Feb. 13. He was transferred the next day to Loma Linda, which has equipment to treat frostbite-caused infection through the administration of high concentrations of oxygen.

Saying they wanted to respect the family’s request for privacy, Loma Linda officials released very little information on Thornton’s condition. On Monday, however, they upgraded their brief public report on his condition from serious to fair, which a hospital spokeswoman said was used to describe a patient whose vital signs are stable and who is no longer considered at risk of death.

But the teenager was much more vulnerable than most people realized.

“One of the things the family has a right to do is limit the amount of information,” Loma Linda spokesman Augustus Cheatham said at the news conference. That created the expectation that Thornton was “just doing fine.”

“He has really been quite ill since his injuries, which probably had something to do with his being transferred here for treatment,” Cheatham said.

Thornton gave a brief television interview and received a visit from Anaheim Mighty Ducks hockey players Thursday--the night before he died.

He appeared weak, bruised around the eyes and out of breath, yet in good humor during a brief KABC-TV Channel 7 “Eyewitness News” report in his hospital room. A blanket was pulled up to his neck and his hands and feet were kept underneath the blanket as he chatted with two players.

“I’m a fellow hockey player too. Yeah, I just won’t play for the NHL,” he told his guests. He stayed prone in bed and seemed at times to be gasping for air.

Asked if he was feeling all right, Thornton replied: “Yeah, pretty good.” Then in response to another inquiry, the teenager said: “My toes, can’t feel those.”

Told that everyone was pulling for him, the snowboarder answered simply: “Bye, everyone.”

The Sierra Madre Search and Rescue Team, two members of which had found Thornton in a ravine, released a message of sympathy Saturday. The team’s men and women “are deeply saddened by the death of Jeff Thornton and extend their condolences to his family and friends. We take some solace that our efforts along with the efforts of other mountain rescue teams and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department enabled Jeff to have some time to spend with his family before his passing,” the statement said.

The teenager disappeared while snowboarding with his uncle Marc Shapiro. Shapiro said the two got off a chairlift at the top of a run on the stormy afternoon and headed into the trees in hopes of finding better snow. Shapiro said he had thought his nephew was right behind him, but the youth apparently lost his way and headed down the rugged backside of the mountain. Authorities said Thornton went out of bounds, crossing under a rope that marked the slope’s boundaries.

Stormy weather hampered the search and rescuers, who tried again on the sixth day, believing they were looking for a body. Word of the rescue resonated around the nation and at home in Brawley, where the snowboarder’s classmates and friends had taken to wearing blue ribbons and pins with “In Hope of Jeff Thornton” inscribed on them.

Hospital officials said Thornton’s stepfather, Billy Mannes, was at the boy’s side when he died.

They said they did not know whether Thornton ever realized the extent of his injuries.

“We never really discussed whether he was aware of how sick he was. We tried to be really positive,” physician Lo said. “He did mention repeatedly to his mother about being scared and insecure.”

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Times staff writers Jean Merl and Larry Gordon contributed to this story.