Helen Massiell Garay Sanchez, a 32-year-old anesthesiologist and mother of two children who was visiting Florida from Nicaragua, was found naked and dead inside the walk-in freezer in the stockroom of the Miami store in December.
Detectives quickly ruled out foul play, but a new toxicology report shows she had a blood-alcohol level of 0.11%, above the legal driving limit of 0.08%, WPLG reported Wednesday.
The cause of death was ruled as environmental hypothermia with ethanol, a form of alcohol, as a “contributory cause.”
Sanchez, a native of Nicaragua, does not appear to have bought anything in the store before she wandered into a restricted employee area and into the freezer, where an employee found her dead the next morning.
The freezer door was not blocked and had an emergency release that would have allowed her to open it, authorities confirmed last month.
Miami police had initially said it was unclear what the doctor’s mental state had been at the time. “We’re not sure the state of mind of that woman, we’re not sure if she intentionally went into the freezer on her own will or if it was something completely accidental,” a spokesperson told NBC 6 News.
Garay Sanchez’s family has since filed a $50 million lawsuit against Dollar Tree and the store’s manager, alleging the store failed to protect shoppers from “foreseeable risks of harm” — like walk-in freezers — and failed to establish “reasonable safety policies and procedures.”
The suit also alleges that the manager had been told the mom was missing and hadn’t been seen leaving that night, saying staff should have taken action to find a customer who “was missing or unaccounted for” after having been “placed on notice.”
The doctor, who specialized in congenital heart disease, leaves behind a husband and two young children described in an online fundraiser as “the center of her world.”
In addition to $50 million, the lawsuit seeks money for medical and funeral expenses as well as legal fees.
Dollar Tree did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment.
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