Manhattan woman visits hospital for broken ankle. Within 14 hours of treatment, she stops breathing: ‘admitted to a bankrupt hospital’

A 21-year-old Manhattan native went to a hospital just to get treatment for her broken ankle. However, she ended up dead because she was allegedly given too many pain medications, according to a lawsuit.

The family of the deceased victim, Dale Alice Martin, said in court documents that Waterbury Hospital in Connecticut disastrously botched her treatment on April 10, 2025. Dale arrived at the hospital with a fractured ankle while doing farm work and was said to have been given a lethal cocktail of drugs that left her brain-dead, according to the Hartford Courant.

An autopsy determined that Dale died from cardiac arrest after being given multiple painkillers, according to the suit filed by family lawyer Christopher Mattei. “Within 14 hours of admission, providers at the hospital had administered so much pain medication that Dale stopped breathing and later died. No one checked on Dale during this time,” the lawsuit said.

No other hospital was available for the victim

“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,” said the dead woman’s father, Lindsay Martin, to the New York Post. “Dale did not have a choice of where to go. She was brought to the nearest hospital.”

According to the Pelham Examiner, Dale lived in Bethlehem, Connecticut, and attended middle and high school in Pelham, New York. Lindsay Martin said he recalls the dreadful phone call from the hospital when his daughter died. “I hung up the phone, and I was in shock,” he said.

California-based Prospect Medical Holdings previously owned Waterbury Hospital, which filed for bankruptcy in January 2025. Earlier this year, Hartford Healthcare bought the struggling facility. A hospital representative declined to comment on Martin’s death, saying the incident occurred before Hartford HealthCare took ownership of the hospital.