Autopsy results shared with the Miami Herald show that Nicaraguan anesthesiologist Dr Helen Massiell Garay Sanchez had a blood alcohol level of 0.11 percent as well as an ocular fluid ethanol level of 0.156 percent before she became trapped in the freezer of a Dollar Tree store in the city’s Little Havana neighborhood on December 13, 2025 and was not discovered until the next day, with officials saying her intoxication “might have been a factor” in her succumbing to hypothermia.

Yeah that’s a lede alright. The “might have been a factor” part is the Herald’s wording, not the coroner’s. What also sticks out is a passing mention of the store’s manager Yanelkis Gonzalez being named as a defendant in a $50 million negligence lawsuit alongside the major discount retailer – the complaint alleging specifically that Gozalaez had refused to review security footage when a customer told her Garay Sanchez was missing. Besides that there isn’t any space devoted to how the fuck a woman gets trapped in a freezer with a glass door and isn’t found until a day later long after she had already frozen to death. God knows how many customers and employees walked by, not to mention actually opened the freezer to grab a 1.3 oz cup of Haagen Dazs or whatever.

Ultimately yes it is Garay Sanchez’s fault that she was drunk – though at 0.11 BAC not excessively over the legal limit to drive of 0.08 – and there’s almost certainly a lot more to the story of why a 32 year-old pediatric anesthesiologist with a husband and two kids is that hammered that she would fall into a goddamned Dollar Tree freezer and unable to simply wobble up and extricate herself.

At the same time, what the Florida, man… How do you let this woman suffer such a gruesome, pointless death and not even know she was in the fucking dollar store freezer for an entire day?