There’s something deeply unsettling about the place where this story begins. Not a dark alley. Not an abandoned building. A Dollar Tree.
Just before a Dollar Tree opened for the day, an employee made a discovery no one is prepared for: a woman’s body inside a walk-in freezer. Miami police were called to the store at 968 SW Eighth St. around 8 a.m. The woman was later identified as 32-year-old Helen Massiell Garay Sanchez, the Miami Herald reports.
As of Sunday afternoon, police weren’t offering answers—only uncertainty. “It’s an Unclassified Death,” Miami police officer Michael Vega wrote in an email. “We have to wait for the medical examiner’s report.”
That phrase does a lot of work. It leaves room for questions, speculation, and unease. It also means investigators don’t yet know—or aren’t ready to say—how or why a young woman visiting family in Miami ended up dead inside a commercial freezer.
Outside the store, crime scene tape stretched across the sidewalk. A Miami police car sat parked out front. Inside, detectives moved in and out of the Dollar Tree while neighbors across Southwest Eighth Street pulled out their phones, recording what they could from a distance.
Life, oddly enough, went on around it all. The Goodwill next door stayed open. The Taco Bell just east kept serving customers. The contrast was jarring: commerce humming along beside a sudden, unexplained death.
Behind the tape, Sanchez’s family gathered, consoling one another quietly. When they stepped away, they declined to speak with reporters. No statements. No quotes. Just grief.
The Dollar Tree, which normally opens at 8 a.m., didn’t reopen until shortly after 1 p.m. A small crowd waited outside, chatting on the sidewalk. When the doors finally opened, a manager greeted every customer with a “Hello,” something regulars noticed was unusual. It felt like an attempt to restore normalcy in a place that no longer felt normal.
As the day went on, more details emerged—and they only made the situation harder to process.
The woman found dead in the freezer wasn’t just a visitor. She was a doctor. A trained anesthesiologist. A mother of two.
Dr. Helen Garay was from El Viejo, Nicaragua. According to her social media, she specialized in congenital heart disease and worked at Manuel de Jesús Rivera Children’s Hospital in Managua. She also worked as an anesthesiologist at Dr. Mauricio Abdalah Hospital in Chinandega. In September, she attended a conference held by the Mexican Society of Cardiothoracic Anesthesiologists. Her posts showed a professional life rooted in medicine and service.
She had been in Miami since at least Dec. 4, visiting relatives. Her son and daughter were still in Nicaragua.
Somehow, during that visit, she ended up alone in a walk-in freezer at a discount store.
Police say they found no signs of foul play after investigating through Sunday morning and early afternoon. For now, the case remains classified as an “unclassified death” while authorities wait on the Miami-Dade Medical Examiner’s report. Why Garay entered the freezer remains under investigation.
That unanswered question looms large. Walk-in freezers aren’t places people casually step into. They’re cold, industrial, and typically secured. The idea that a visiting doctor could die there without immediate explanation is unsettling in a way that’s hard to shake.
In the absence of clarity, her family is now dealing with another harsh reality: bringing her home.
A GoFundMe created Sunday is raising money to send Dr. Garay’s body back to Nicaragua. Nearly $6,000 has been raised toward a $20,000 goal. “The family is currently raising funds to cover the costs of repatriation, transportation, and funeral services in Nicaragua,” the page states. “Any contribution, no matter the amount, will help honor her life and legacy and support her children during this devastating time.”
That last part matters most. Two children are now without their mother, separated not only by grief but by distance, borders, and bureaucracy.
For now, all that exists are fragments: a freezer, a police investigation, a grieving family, and a life that ended in a place it never should have.
The medical examiner’s report may eventually explain what happened. Or it may leave some questions unanswered forever. Either way, Helen Garay should be remembered for more than the location where she was found.
