A mother is grieving after a carbon monoxide incident killed her 11-year-old son and put her husband in hospital in critical condition.
Marina Hills’s son Henry Losco died on Dec. 19 in their apartment at 1827 Albert St. in Regina, after carbon monoxide leaked in the building while maintenance work was being done. Her husband Sergio Losco survived but is still in hospital.
“I used to tell my son, ‘You are loved and cherished every day of your life,’” she said. “Then I would say, ‘Do you know how much I love you?’ And he would say, ‘To the moon and back times a million,’ and I said, ‘Yep.’
“He was my best friend.”
Hills said she started a new job just two weeks ago, and went to work as usual that day. She tried calling home in the afternoon and there was no answer, but she assumed they were busy.
When she got off work and returned home, she said she walked into the apartment and called out for help with the turkey she was carrying, but it was quiet.
Hills walked into the kitchen and saw her husband lying on the floor. She said at first, she thought he had suffered a stroke, and she started yelling for help.
“His eyes were wide, but he was unconscious. They were bulging out of his head,” she said.
Then Hills realized Henry wasn’t responding, and she ran out of the kitchen into the bedroom, where she found her son, also unconscious. She said that’s when she realized it could be a gas leak, and she pulled her son out of the apartment and screamed for help. A neighbour came to help her and called 911.
Hills ran back into her apartment to get her husband out.
“At first, I couldn’t move him … but I was able to drag him out of there with all my might. I got him out the door and I saw that he was still breathing,” she said. “I ran back over to my son and 911 said to put the phone by Henry’s mouth to see if he is breathing.”
“I said, ‘He’s not. There’s nothing.’”
She tried resuscitating Henry, until first responders arrived and took over. She said she was sitting on the floor when someone came over and told her that her son was dead, and they were taking her husband to the hospital.
When the coroner allowed her later that night to return to where her son was, she said she ran to him and started kissing him.
“I just kept telling him how much I loved him. I told him that he needed to wake up. I said, ‘Just wake up. If you just wake up, this is all over and we can leave and we can go home.’”
She said the coroner told her they didn’t need to do an autopsy because a blood test showed the fatally high level of carbon monoxide in her son’s blood.
Hills said her family moved to Regina from St. John’s, N.L., after she got her new job, which allowed her to put Henry in “an expensive soccer program” with a “very competitive” team in the city.
She said Henry wanted to play for a national team and had dreams of going to the Olympics.
“He was so happy and he had so many friends and we just moved here and he was so excited to be in Regina to start a new adventure,” Hills said.
The manager of the soccer team that Henry played with in St. John’s said in a statement that the soccer community there is “heartbroken” by his death.
“He had a smile that lit up every room and a laugh that was truly contagious,” Melyssa Turner wrote. “As a goalkeeper for St. John’s soccer, he had a true passion for soccer and was a force to be reckoned with on the field. He was the true definition of a teammate — a friend to everyone he met, with a heart of gold and a spirit that lifted those around him.”
In a news conference Monday, Regina Fire and Protective Services Chief Layne Jackson said the investigation is ongoing.
“What we can confirm thus far is that there was some mechanical work being done in the building on some service equipment,” he said.
“That piece of service equipment was indeed identified as the source of the carbon monoxide release,” Jackson said. “They also inspected, verified and confirmed the other service is operational within the building, and the building is safe.”
As of 1:30 p.m. Saturday, all impacted residents were cleared to return home.
Multiple agencies are investigating, including the fire department, police, the Technical Safety Authority of Saskatchewan and the Saskatchewan Coroners Service.
