Talal Al-namrouti of Bellevue spent the morning of July 1 playing soccer with his sons. By 11 p.m. he was dead, steps away from help at Overlake Hospital’s emergency room. What happened?

On the day 44-year-old Talal Al-namrouti died, he enjoyed a game of soccer with his three sons that morning at Robinswood Park.

It was a typical day for Al-namrouti Tuesday, July 1. He ran his usual five miles around the park. He came home to shower and eat a healthy lunch. He spent the day hanging out with his boys – Ahamad, 16, Amjad, 13 and Samy, 11.

In just a few days he would leave with his sons to join his wife, Sumia, and three daughters – Dana, 1, Ahlam, 6 and Amin, 8 – in Jordan for a family wedding.

So when his body turned up that night in some bushes in front of Overlake Hospital’s ambulance entrance to the emergency room, everyone was shocked.

And left with a lot of questions.

“I couldn’t believe it until I got here and saw his face,” said Najeh Al-namrouti, who came from California to his older brother’s home the moment he received the news.

July 8, a week after Al-namrouti’s death, nearly 20 cars lined the street in front of his home in the Somerset neighborhood. Inside the house, his co-workers from the Wind River company, where he worked as a technical account manager, commingled with Al-namrouti’s cousins, siblings, in-laws, children and wife who had returned from Jordan to grieve his loss.

This has been the first day in a week that Sumia has been able to get out of bed and talk, said Najeh, who sat at a table on the backyard deck with several male relatives, including Al-namrouti’s two eldest sons.

He described his brother as very healthy, passing up coffee for sunflowers, and strictly adhered to never letting anyone smoke in his home or near his family. Al-namrouti never drank soda or ate junk food and was very athletic, Najeh said, adding that his brother has never had any major health problems.

The King County Medical Examiner’s Office ruled it a natural death and said Al-namrouti had died of coronary thrombosis, or heart disease.

His family believes he should still be alive.

The night he died, he had told his sons he was leaving to get a check-up. He called his wife on his cell phone and said he was driving himself to Overlake Hospital because he was having some difficulty breathing.

Last year, Al-namrouti had gone to Overlake’s old emergency room in the West Tower for an ear problem. A few months later in October the hospital relocated the emergency department to the new South Tower.

“My brother should have been saved,” Najeh said, huddled with other relatives around his laptop as they watched the hospital’s video surveillance of Al-namrouti’s final moments. It shows him parking on the third level of the west parking garage, adjacent to the West Tower.

“It’s not a supermarket – it’s a big hospital,” Najeh said. “The old Emergency Room should have had signs out that said it’s been moved to a different location.”

The video shows Al-namrouti’s Honda driving towards the South Tower, but then circling the area several times before it goes into the west parking garage. Moments later, he appears on the ground level walking out of the parking garage with a woman.

Najeh said his brother appears as though he is not in pain, and is clutching a book at his side that he had brought with him knowing that the wait in the emergency room would probably be long. He and the woman continue out of the garage, across a walkway that connects the garage to the West Tower and stop at the old emergency room entrance cluttered with cardboard and other debris.

The woman tugs on the locked door. An illuminated red sign overhead reads “Emergency Trauma Center.”

They proceed past the door to the back of the hospital and that is the last time he is seen in the video footage.

According to Bellevue Police, hospital security saw his legs sticking out of the bushes, on a small island about 30 yards from the ambulance entrance to the emergency department around 11 p.m. He had been there less than 10 minutes, officials said.

Bellevue firefighters already at the hospital on an unrelated incident, as well as hospital staff, attempted life-saving measures in the emergency room, but were unable to revive him.

To get from the location at the West Tower where he was last seen to the ambulance entrance, Al-namrouti walked down a service driveway along the back of the hospital (not shown in the video). The driveway runs downhill, past a shipping and receiving area, and then up a steep incline to the ambulance entrance.

According to Richard Bryan, Overlake’s chief compliance officer and vice president of risk management, the hospital had temporary signage placed next to the old emergency room site to direct patients to the new South Tower.

“It was purposely removed after four months,” Bryan said. “We don’t want to confuse people driving or walking on that side of the building to read something that would even reference the emergency room.

“If someone in a crisis reads ‘emergency room,’ they would go there, even if there was an arrow directing them somewhere else.”

He said all three access points to the hospital from 116th Avenue Northeast and every main thoroughfare has illuminated signage directing people to the South Tower emergency room that is “clearly marked and visible day or night.”

As far as areas in the back of the hospital, he said the hospital “can’t anticipate if someone climbs through the bushes and walks past the signs and past the service driveway. We can’t anticipate putting way signing in every point of access.”

The “Emergency Trauma Center” sign above the old emergency room site is meant for freeway traffic and for people to see from a long distance, so they know the hospital has that kind of care, Bryan added.

He also noted that patients have expressed that they feel the new emergency room is even more accessible and visible than it was before. The new location also has a parking lot out front for patients who don’t arrive by ambulance.

“I’ve met with the family and this is clearly a tragedy,” Bryan said, adding “This type of event clearly points out the need for anyone experiencing chest pain to call 911.”

But for Al-namrouti’s family, it will serve as a constant reminder that anyone – even the most healthy – can go when they least expect it.

As Najeh and the rest of the family sort out the death, they hope for an answer to an unsolved mystery of sorts. Who was the woman in the video footage?

“We would ask her what happened to my brother,” Najeh said. “Was he suffering? What were his final moments?”

In the meantime, Najeh will help take care of Sumia and the children and “make sure the kids live the life he would have wanted them to. Talal wanted to live as long as he could to be with his kids.”

They will bring his body back to his home in Jordan for services. Al-namrouti’s survivors include his wife and six children; his five younger brothers and five younger sisters; father, Ahmad and countless relatives and friends.

Carrie Wood can be reached at cwood@reporternewspapers.com or 425-453-4290.