An ambulance arrived quickly on the scene, but, thanks to the automated entry system the gym uses, first responders were hampered in getting inside and getting vital life-saving equipment inside, while no information was provided next to a simple button which if pressed could have opened emergency exits.

The prosecutor's office recently decided not to initiate a criminal investigation over the death, however.

ETV investigative show "Pealtnägija" broke down the case of Oliver Viiask, in detail.

Oliver Viiask's mother, Gertu Viiask, who lives in Viljandi County, has had six children.

Tragically, while she lost her first son several years ago in an accident, a second tragedy struck at the gym in February.

Oliver was Gertu's second youngest child and had a cheerful disposition, loved animals, and had planned to be baptized in the spring. In early February, a flat in Viljandi was rented for Oliver, a 10th grade student, as commuting from home in Mustla to school in the town, about 30 kilometers away, had proved inconvenient.

Gertu, who works as the head of Paistu community center, saw her son for the last time on the evening of February 14, at around 7 p.m., when she brought him to Viljandi to eat.

That evening, Oliver joined two other boys of roughly the same age, to head to a gym on the outskirts of town. Timo and Arkos were classmates and practiced weightlifting. In fact, Arkos was Oliver's stepbrother.

Oliver tended to visit the gym less frequently than the other two; according to Timo, they had been at the gym for half an hour prior to the incident, and had not been working out with particularly heavy weights.

"I still kept an eye on him, to make sure he had rest breaks, and everything was fine. At some point I noticed he looked a bit pale, so I asked if he was okay. Oliver said he was fine, so I didn't think any more of it," Timo recalled.

Despite the relatively late hour, the gym was fairly crowded, and the boys were having fun. According to Gertu, they were chatting, Oliver drank some water, checked his phone, but then suddenly stepped back and gently collapsed to the floor, losing consciousness. Those in the immediate vicinity didn't realize the severity of the situation right away.

Oliver's stepfather, Toomas Taimre, said: "He was the whole time with his friends, in plain sight, but nobody really knew what to do. Everyone had their headphones on, doing their own routines. If he had been completely alone, without his friends, I believe he would've lain there for many minutes before anyone even noticed something was wrong."

About a minute after Oliver lost consciousness, a gym customer called 112, emergency services. An ambulance was dispatched, while, under the guidance of a dispatcher medic, another man began performing chest compressions, though these were inconsistent.

This was taking place just before 10.10 p.m.

Even then, most of the gym-goers still didn't register how alarming the situation was. Coincidentally, a professional nurse happened to be training on a nearby machine, and noticed what was happening, and they offered help.
The chest compression began again, more aggressively this time, the clock at a little after 10.10 p.m. now.

Since Viljandi is a small town, and a quiet one at that hour, the Viljandi ambulance arrived in just a few minutes, and was at the door by quarter past ten. While the gym and surrounding area are covered by numerous security cameras, the company says no footage remains of what took place at the entranceway.

Timo let the medical team in through the front door, but there was an issue at the entry turnstile.

According to Timo, he opened the door for the first team, but they got stuck with their equipment. "So he had to leave the gear, the machines. He went in. And then waited for the rest of the team to get through."

Eventually, passerby gym visitors had to let the paramedics in using their own access cards. This meant the first medic lost about a minute struggling at the entrance. The second got through about a minute later, with a crucial defibrillator. The third arrived with the resuscitation bag. By this time it was 10.18 p.m., a full ten minutes after Oliver had lost consciousness, though still a relatively quick response time.

While the team fought for the boy's life, others started thinking through how to get him out of the building. The facility has several emergency exits — one right next to the turnstile — but these proved to all be locked. Timo said they initially tried breaking the door down. Later, he called the security company, G4S.

"G4S said at first that they couldn't do anything about it. That there was no way. So I said — how can that be? There has to be a way. There has to be a solution — a person is unconscious here."

24-7 Fitness owns 21 gyms across Estonia, offering affordable workout options and — just as the name states — round the clock. But this is largely due to their automated access system.

The company is headed up by Andrus Murumets, for many years Estonia's strongest man title holder. He claims the Viljandi outlet, opened only last September, meets all the regulations. Murumets found more surprising the fact that, among the safety solutions, the building has several panic buttons which can open emergency exits — yet no one thought to press them.

"The wait could have been shorter if someone from the first responder team or one of the other visitors had pressed the emergency evacuation button. Pressing it would have opened the evacuation doors along the path and triggered a signal to the security company, who would have then dispatched a patrol," Murumets explained.

According to Tuuli Paju, a board member of Tartu Kiirabi, the ambulance service which covers Viljandi, the emergency services were unaware that pressing the button would open the doors. "Today, we're smarter. When these gyms were put up, there was a lack of communication from their side to us—telling us that if you need to get in quickly, please press here," she said.

A representative of the ambulance service added that many of their staff are also firefighters, yet even they didn't know that pressing the buttons would open the gates. "There's also the assumption that pressing these just activates sirens or sprinklers," the spokesperson said.

Murumets found this lack of knowledge odd, and confirmed that pressing the button would not cause sprinklers to go off.

In the case in question, G4S then called Murumets, who opened the door remotely. In hindsight, the ambulance crew and doctors say they gave everything they had to save Oliver.

Resuscitation efforts in the gym lasted for an hour and — without going into detail — were highly complex. Eventually, the decision was made to transport the boy to Tartu University Hospital, where they have an extracorporeal circulation machine (ECMO), but tragically by that time the critical window in which Oliver's life might have been saved had passed by.

Although Paju conceded that by then the situation was already hopeless, the hospital staff fought for the 17-year-old, through the night. However, by morning, the family was given the awful news. "Death took place at the moment Oliver collapsed. The fact that he reached the hospital and received treatment there — yes, officially, the time of death was recorded at the hospital, but in reality, he died in that gym," Paju said.

The initial autopsy did not reveal the cause of death as sudden cardiac arrest or anything out of the ordinary. A more thorough analysis will take several more months. According to witnesses, one detail hasn't been mentioned before, though. Before entering the gym, Oliver had taken some caffeine powder provided by his stepbrother, albeit a product sold in regular grocery stores.

Timo said: "Earlier, Oliver took some of that pre-workout (pre-workout is a brand name – ed.). His friend said he took only a tiny amount. /…/ He threw it up immediately. That was while we were still at the apartment. He threw up right away. It made him feel bad, so he vomited, and then we went to the gym."

Oliver's remains have been cremated, while the family plans to hold a woodland burial at their home farm, by the river, at the start of summer. Even if the boys consumed a stimulant before the workout, the family's focus is on drawing lessons from the incident. On the one hand, they say they don't seek revenge, but on the other, they still filed a complaint with the prosecutor's office, claiming that Oliver's death may have been the result of negligence.

Last week came the response: The prosecutor's office found that the 24-7 Fitness club's client contract and internal rules do not provide sufficient guidance for emergency situations, but at the same time, that was not considered fatal in Oliver's case.

"Although there was a breach of the duty of care, it is doubtful whether there is a causal link between that breach and the fatality. /.../ It cannot be stated definitively that if the ambulance had reached the person in need sooner, his life could have been saved," the prosecutor's statement reads.

The family is not disputing the decision, but are urging a review of safety measures and the consideration of changes — especially since, according to emergency services, this is not the first time that access to a closed facility or building has caused issues.

A separate issue is that of the AED, or automatic external defibrillator, which, according to Paju, should be available in public places, as they have long proven their worth and saved several lives — even in Estonia in places like Aura keskus and Tasku keskus, respectively a water park and shopping mall, both in Tartu.

Club owner Murumets conceded that they could have put in place such devices, but that the law does not require it. "My question is simply whether people know how to use them. If, as in this case, we had the red emergency buttons but people didn't use them, would they know how — and dare — to use resuscitation devices?" Murumets enquired.

Following the incident, and after a fire department recommendation, the club added an explanatory note next to the emergency button, and installed a separate green button which opens the emergency exit without triggering the fire alarm.

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