A 21-year-old Manhattan native went to the hospital for treatment of a broken ankle. Instead, she died after allegedly being given an excessive amount of pain medication, according to a shocking lawsuit.
The family of Dale Alice Martin alleges in court documents that Waterbury Hospital in Connecticut severely mishandled the college student’s care on April 10, 2025. Martin had fractured her ankle while doing farm work, but the lawsuit claims she was given a lethal combination of drugs that left her brain-dead, the Hartford Courant reported.
“We didn’t know till after Dale’s 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,” her father, Westchester County resident Lindsay Martin, told the outlet.
“Dale did not have a choice of where to go,” he said of his daughter, a Bethlehem, Connecticut, resident who attended middle and high school in Pelham in Westchester County. According to the Pelham Examiner, she studied English and history at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas.
“She was brought to the nearest hospital,” her father said.
An autopsy determined that Martin died of cardiac arrest after receiving multiple painkillers, according to the lawsuit filed by the family’s attorney, Christopher Mattei.
“Within 14 hours of admission, providers at the hospital had administered so much pain medication that Dale stopped breathing and later died,” the lawsuit states. “No one checked on Dale during this time.”
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“The same medications that were interfering with Dale’s 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.”
Lindsay Martin said he still remembers the devastating phone call from the hospital informing him of his daughter’s death.
“I hung up the phone, and I was in shock,” he said.
The family said it was unaware of the hospital’s financial and operational problems. Waterbury Hospital had long been owned by California-based Prospect Medical Holdings, which filed for bankruptcy in January 2025.
Earlier this year, Hartford HealthCare purchased the struggling facility along with two other hospitals.
“What 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,” Mattei said.
A hospital representative declined to comment, saying Martin’s death occurred before Hartford HealthCare took ownership.
Former Prospect CEOs David Topper and Von Crockett did not respond to calls and emails from WNBC-TV News seeking comment on the lawsuit.
