Bodybuilder dies while in a coma after spending 15 hours unconscious in shower following collapse

When the alarm was raised that Giuliano Pirone had not been seen for some time, police were forced to break down a door of the shower to find him.

The 33-year-old fitness guru, from Australia, was found lying in the shower cubicle with the water still running about 10.30pm on Tuesday 20 August. Officers had to used his phone signal to locate him after his mother Daniela Pirone reported him missing earlier in the afternoon when he did not come home from work.

Prior to her son’s death, Ms Pirone told Nadia Mitsopoulos on ABC Radio Perth her son often went to the gym at around 5am before he started his job as a building supervisor. He was usually home from work by 3pm, but that day he did not arrive.

“I rang him, messaged him, nothing," she said. "His dad rang him, nothing, which is very unusual. He will always pick up the phone for us or ring back straight away.

She said that the unusual circumstances caused her to start to panic. “We rang his ex-wife, and we rang his friends. No-one had heard from him,” she added.

Mr Pirone, who was a father, was found him in the gym in Perth's northern suburbs a few hours later. His mother continued: "They did CPR, and he came conscious pretty fast. The ambulance arrived within five minutes and then they got him straight to hospital."

Mr Pirone was placed in an induced coma with potential brain injuries. Doctors told his family they thought his blood sugar levels became extremely low, his blood pressure dropped and he may have had some kind of seizure which caused him to collapse.

He had been on life support for around two weeks prior to his death. He never regained full consciousness and an MRI scan performed earlier this week confirmed he had lost brain function.

After her son’s death, Ms Pirone spoke to ABC Radio Perth again and said: “I will never look at the Sun, the Moon and the sky the same way again, the light that shone bright has left me.” Mr Pirone's family now want to know how he could have been in the shower so long without any staff noticing he was there. The gym, in the city of Wanneroo is open 24 hours a day, but is not staffed round the clock.

Ms Pirone has questioned, however, asked why, once staff had begun work, they did not notice that it had been hours since her son checked in. She also questioned why staff did not realise that his car had sat in the car park all day, or why a cleaner hadn’t found him much sooner.

"My beautiful son was alone on that floor, collapsed, smashed his head for about 15 hours and no-one noticed anything," she said. "His car was parked right at the front of the gym because when he checked in, it was 4.55am.

"The showers are 20 metres away from reception and no-one noticed anything. Don't the showers get cleaned? I'm just dumbfounded."

The gym's website states that staff are present for several hours in the morning and late afternoon only. Police have accessed CCTV footage from the gym which showed Mr Pirone in the gym and entering the showers. It’s understood that he had been training for a bodybuilder competition.

Ms Pirone, who has seen the footage, said: "You see him not feeling too good on the treadmill. He bumps into other machines. He staggers to the showers, holding his stomach, not feeling well.

"[He] went in there and must have just locked himself in, felt hot, turned the cold water on and bang, he collapsed."

In the wake of her son’s undetected medical emergency, Ms Pirone has called for gyms to be staffed and said she believes checks of places like bathrooms and showers should be carried out every hour to prevent something like this happening again. She added that she thinks duress alarms should be installed in such places too so people could call for help.

Her daughter, and Mr Pirone’s sister, Rosa Ostapenko said she believes the gym should also be checking what time gym-goers check in and out as this would indicate if someone may be in trouble.

"I think they should implement a check-in, check-out system where if they've been at the gym longer than three hours, there must be an alert of some sort, because it's very rare that someone goes to the gym for more than three hours," she said.

In a statement prior to Mr Pirone’s death, the gym's management staff offered their "deepest sympathies to Giuliano's family during this difficult time". 

The full statement read: "Our thoughts are with them. We have been in contact with those close to Giuliano and we will continue to engage with the family to provide whatever support we can.

"Since we became aware of the incident, we have provided, and continue to provide all necessary access and information to emergency services to assist them in their efforts. As a 24-hour gym facility, we remain committed to maintaining a safe, secure and accessible environment for all our members."

A representative for the gym has not spoken our further in the wake of Mr Pirone’s untimely death.

In a statement issued at the time Mr Pirone was found, the police said there was no criminal investigation into the circumstances he was found in. "The police response to this incident was a welfare check, so was treated in line with a missing person investigation," the spokesperson said.

"We have however collected CCTV from the gym, and this is a routine process we go through to determine what caused a person to be lost, stranded or found in distress, in case similar incidents occur in the future.

"A criminal investigation would only be conducted if there was evidence of a law being breached."