Arizona family of Kaelen Lachica sues Abrazo Health Arrowhead hospital after son’s death
An Arizona family is demanding change and demanding answers after a 27-year-old man died hours after being taken from a hospital and dumped on the side of the road on a hot summer day, according to a wrongful-death lawsuit.
Seth and Gayle Lachica, Kaelen Lachica’s parents, said staff at Abrazo Health Arrowhead put their son in an Uber and took him out of a Phoenix homeless shelter despite his critical condition.
“What they did was abandon me. I mean, they absolutely killed my son,” Seth Lachica told Fox News Digital.
Kaelan Lachica suffered from anorexia for almost a decade but her condition had improved in the year before her hospitalization in August 2025, her father said.
Lachica was hospitalized at one facility before being transferred to Abrazo Health Arrowhead after suffering a stroke and weight loss.
In the days before his discharge, his health deteriorated to the point where he was “delusional” and “immobile,” the lawsuit said. On August 13, 2025, Kaelan verbally assaulted a nurse and asked to leave the hospital “against medical advice,” the family’s attorney, Richard Lyons, told Fox News Digital.
The lawsuit alleges that Kaelan was placed in a wheelchair and placed in an Uber, which was paid for by the hospital, and taken to a shelter in downtown Phoenix. He couldn’t remember his address, Lyons said.
However, Kaelan’s address was in his medical records and was readily available to hospital staff prior to his discharge, the complaint said.
“I mean they put him in a wheelchair and they pushed him out and they let him go,” Lyons said. “And I’m not saying that he was medically discharged, I mean that they discharged him from the hospital because they don’t want him as a patient.”
Kaelen was spotted by a police officer lying on the side of the road, his family said. Temperatures reportedly reached triple digits that day.
“How are you going to take a seriously ill man out of the world and just dump him on the street in the middle of August?” Lyons said. “If you know, whether he can make his own medical decisions or not, people die here without heat all the time.”
The hospital called Seth Lachica in the morning while he was sleeping to inform him that his son had been discharged.
After walking around the area where Kaelan was dropped off, he found paramedics performing CPR on his son in the street.
“I told them not to release him. They—— sent him here,” Lachica told the police. “They sent him here this morning and they just—— put him down to die.”
Kaelan was rushed to another hospital, where he died. The lawsuit alleges that Abrazo employees showed disregard for Kaelen’s physical safety and well-being.
“One wouldn’t expect a bar bouncer to dump a disabled person on a hot Phoenix street in the middle of August — let alone hospital staff,” the lawsuit said.
“But that’s exactly what Abrazo employees did to Kaelen. This behavior goes beyond negligence, or medical malpractice – their decision to dump their very sick young patient on the side of the road – in Phoenix, August – directly caused Kaelen’s death.”
Abrazo Health declined to comment on the lawsuit when reached by Fox News Digital.
