A 21-year-old Manhattan native went to a hospital to be treated for a simple broken ankle \u2014 only to end up dead because she was given too many painkillers, according to a shocking lawsuit.<\/p>\n
The heartbroken family of tragic Dale Alice Martin said in court documents that Waterbury Hospital in Connecticut disastrously botched the college student\u2019s care April 10, 2025, when she arrived there to be treated for the ankle she fractured while doing farm work \u2014 and was given a lethal cocktail of drugs that left her brain-dead, the Hartford Courant reported.<\/a><\/p>\n New York City native Dale Alice Martin never survived her trip to the hospital for a broken ankle. NBC News<\/p>\n \u201cWe didn\u2019t know till after Dale\u2019s death that she was admitted to a bankrupt hospital that was under investigation, where nurses allegedly were buying food for patients, where the level of funding was so constrained that the hospital may not have been able to function properly,\u201d said the dead woman\u2019s father, Westchester County resident Lindsay Martin, to the outlet.<\/p>\n \u201cDale did not have a choice of where to go,\u201d he said of his daughter, a Bethlehem, Connecticut, resident who attended middle and high school in Pelham in Westechester and was an English and history student at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas, according to the Pelham Examiner<\/a>.<\/p>\n Waterbury Hospital was owned at the time by a bankrupt company. Connecticut Public Broadcasting via Getty Images<\/p>\n \u201cShe was brought to the nearest hospital,\u201d the dad noted.<\/p>\n An autopsy determined that Dale died from cardiac arrest after being given multiple painkillers, according to the suit filed by family lawyer Christopher Mattei.<\/p>\n Dale\u2019s father, Lindsay (left), said he was \u201cin shock\u201d after learning of his daughter\u2019s death. NBC News<\/p>\n \u201cWithin 14 hours of admission, providers at the hospital had administered so much pain medication that Dale stopped breathing and later died,\u201d the lawsuit said. \u201cNo one checked on Dale during this time. <\/p>\n \u201cThe same medications that were interfering with Dale\u2019s breathing were also sedating her. Dale could not even call for help as she suffocated. At 7 a.m. on April 10, a Waterbury Hospital nurse finally checked on Dale. It was far too late. Her heart had stopped beating.\u201d<\/p>\n Lindsay Martin said he remembers the dreadful phone call from the hospital when she died.<\/p>\n \u201cI hung up the phone, and I was in shock,\u201d the dad said.<\/p>\n The family had been unaware of the issues with the hospital, which was long owned by California-based Prospect Medical Holdings, a company that filed for bankruptcy in January 2025.<\/p>\n Earlier this year, Hartford HealthCare bought the struggling facility and two others. <\/p>\n \u201cWhat we expect to find is that this was a hospital that was largely operating on fumes as a result of Prospect dismantling infrastructure within the hospital, reducing staff, training, and finding every way possible to extract value out of the hospital in a way that jeopardized care,\u201d Mattei said.<\/p>\n A rep for the hospital declined to comment because Dale\u2019s death predated its ownership.<\/p>\n