Widow Wants To Know Why Husband Died At Brockton VA

How did this Marine veteran overdose at a Brockton VA hospital?

The Enterprise
By Tom Relihan
Posted Aug 5, 2017

Marine Corps veteran Hank Brandon Lee was found unresponsive in his room and was later pronounced dead at Good Samaritan Medical Center on March 4. He had overdosed on fentanyl, a powerful synthetic painkiller, according to his death certificate. Now, his widow wants answers.

BROCKTON – Jamie-Lee Hasted had just hung up the phone after a conversation with her husband, retired Marine Lance Cpl. Hank Brandon Lee, and headed out to mail him a package of family photographs.

He would need them, she thought, because he was nearly 1,500 miles away from his home in Saucier, Mississippi, in the Brockton Veterans Affairs Medical Center’s psychiatric unit being treated for severe post-traumatic stress disorder.

Later that day, she sent him a message on Facebook, but received no response.

“You going to call me anytime today or are you sleeping again!” she wrote.

Pallas Wahl, a spokesperson for the VA, said Saturday that it is still not known how Lee acquired the drugs.

“Sadly, Lance Cpl. Lee was a victim of the opioid epidemic that kills nearly six people daily in Massachusetts,” Wahl said. “Lance Cpl. Lee suffered a fatal overdose of fentanyl while a patient at the Brockton campus. Fentanyl was not prescribed to any patient within our inpatient psychiatry unit, and Lance Cpl. Lee had no personal visitors during his inpatient psychiatry stay.”
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