A Marine Corps veteran fatally overdosed on fentanyl while under lockdown in inpatient care at a Department of Veterans Affairs psychiatric facility. Now his widow wants to know how he got ahold of the drugs, reports The Boston Herald.
Hank Brandon Lee died March 4 of acute fentanyl intoxication at the age of 35. He was rushed to Good Samaritan Hospital after being discovered unresponsive in the Department of Veterans Affairs psychiatric campus in Brockton, Massachusetts, according to the Herald.
At the time of his death, Lee was on lockdown by the facility — meaning he was checked on every 15 minutes by a nurse, and his trips outside the facility were strictly monitored, per the report.
Lee served in the Marine Corps from 2001-2008 as a mortarman. The lance corporal served in Iraq and Afghanistan during his enlistment. He was deemed 100 percent disabled for PTSD and a traumatic brain injury, according the Herald.
“Since he has passed, the VA has told us nothing,” Jamie Lee Hasted told the Herald. “Answers, the bottom line is answers. … Did he take it willingly, not willingly, mixed up in the medicine? You have video cameras, where is the video? What happened? Let me try to get some type of closure.”
The VA told the Herald that no patients had been prescribed fentanyl in the inpatient psychiatry unit at the time of Lee’s death, and that Lee had no personal visitors during his monthlong stay, per the report.
“This case is one of a kind. I have never heard of anybody die in lockdown,” Rick Collins of Veterans 360, an advocacy group that is assisting Lee’s widow, told the Herald.
