{"id":153125,"date":"2026-02-12T16:10:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-12T16:10:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/153125\/"},"modified":"2026-02-12T16:10:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-12T16:10:07","slug":"woman-froze-to-death-inside-dollar-tree-store-in-miami-autopsy-report-shows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/153125\/","title":{"rendered":"Woman froze to death inside Dollar Tree store in Miami, autopsy report shows"},"content":{"rendered":"

An autopsy report released by the Miami-Dade County Medical Examiner’s Office is revealing the cause of death of a woman found inside a freezer at a Dollar Tree store in Miami back in December<\/a>.<\/p>\n

According to the report, the cause of death of 32-year-old Helen Massiell Garay Sanchez was listed as environmental hypothermia, with a contributory cause of death being ethanol use.<\/p>\n

According to the Cleveland Clinic, hypothermia occurs after being exposed to cold, wet and\/or windy conditions.<\/p>\n

“Hypothermia, or low body temperature, is a condition that occurs when your body’s temperature drops below 95 degrees Fahrenheit (35 degrees Celsius),” the Cleveland Clinic reports on its website<\/a>. “The average normal body temperature is 98.6 degrees F (37 C). Hypothermia is a medical emergency.”<\/p>\n

If hypothermia is left untreated, hypothermia can lead to cardiac arrest and death.<\/p>\n

The autopsy report also showed that her ethanol levels were at 0.112%. Ethanol is also the active ingredient found in alcoholic beverages.<\/p>\n

The medical examiner’s office ruled her death as an accident.<\/p>\n

What happened to the woman found dead inside a freezer at a Miami Dollar Tree store?<\/p>\n

According to the autopsy report, Miami police<\/a> said said Sanchez, who was from Nicaragua<\/a>, was visiting South Florida<\/a> and was out with friends and family on the night of Dec. 13, 2025.<\/p>\n

Authorities said that she had been drinking at a local restaurant, and was later noted by law enforcement to be intoxicated.<\/p>\n

Just after 7 p.m. that evening, she and her sister walked into a Dollar Tree<\/a> in Little Havana<\/a> and began to look through the store’s aisles.<\/p>\n

Sanchez’s sister said she couldn’t locate her inside the store after a period of time and approached store associated for help.<\/p>\n

At the time, police said store staff were unable to access surveillance video from the store, and the woman’s sister ended up leaving to continue her search.<\/p>\n

Early the next morning, an employee of the Dollar Tree store entered a walk-in freezer and found Sanchez between some boxes.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Emergency crews were called, and City of Miami Fire Rescue pronounced her dead at the scene.<\/p>\n

Little Havana residents were “devastated” by the incident<\/p>\n

People who showed up at the store after the incident said were shocked by the deadly discovery.<\/p>\n

“I got to be honest with you, I’m totally devastated,” said concerned resident Margarita Puig. “I can’t believe in the Dollar Tree you’d find a dead body.”<\/p>\n

Hugo Morales, another concerned resident, said he was concerned about when the woman’s family would find out.<\/p>\n

“I think it’s crazy,” Morales said. “I’ve never heard of something like that in my life.”<\/p>\n

In:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An autopsy report released by the Miami-Dade County Medical Examiner’s Office is revealing the cause of death of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":153126,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[5507,46019,15403,123,125,124,8166,1064,43349,807],"class_list":{"0":"post-153125","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-miami","8":"tag-death","9":"tag-dollar-tree","10":"tag-little-havana","11":"tag-miami","12":"tag-miami-headlines","13":"tag-miami-news","14":"tag-miami-police","15":"tag-miami-dade","16":"tag-nicaragua","17":"tag-south-florida"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153125","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=153125"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153125\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/153126"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=153125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=153125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=153125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}