She Stopped Moving at 9:34 a.m. They Didn’t Check Until 2:23 p.m. How a Woman Died in Waterbury Police Custody While “Monitoring” Failed
On Saturday, May 10, 2025, Alyssa Insogna was found unresponsive in Women’s Cell #2 at the Waterbury Police Department. Emergency Medical Services responded and attempted life-saving measures, but the effort was doomed from the start. At 2:57 p.m., she was pronounced deceased. She was 29 years old. The autopsy later determined she died from acute intoxication due to the combined effects of cocaine and fentanyl, and the manner of death was ruled accidental. On paper, that could have been the end of the story, filed away as another tragic overdose. But the Office of Inspector General’s investigation makes clear this was also a story about neglect, broken procedure, and a failure of basic custodial care that should alarm anyone who believes “in custody” is supposed to mean “under supervision.”
Insogna’s path into custody began the day before. On Friday, May 9, 2025, a Waterbury police officer was dispatched to an abandoned house on Willow Street after a complaint of criminal activity. The property was known for trespassing and narcotics use. The officer located Insogna walking nearby and observed signs consistent with drug use. When asked for identification, Insogna initially provided false information. A records check ultimately revealed her real identity and an outstanding warrant for Failure to Appear with a $10,000 bond. She was arrested and transported to the Waterbury Police Department, where the situation escalated quickly during booking.
A matron searched Insogna and discovered a small bag concealed near her right ankle. Inside were eighteen white wax paper folds containing a substance that field-tested positive for heroin/fentanyl. Based on that discovery, she was charged with possession of narcotics with intent to sell. A $5,000 bond was set for the new charges, on top of the $10,000 bond from the warrant, putting her total at $15,000. She could not post bond and was placed in custody in Women’s Cell #2, where she would remain through the night into Saturday.
The Inspector General’s report lays out the next hours with unnerving precision, because the surveillance system captured much of what happened, and what didn’t happen. The cell camera recorded Insogna’s movements through the night and into the morning. She appeared restless. She repositioned repeatedly. She used the toilet multiple times. The last recorded movement inside the cell occurred at 9:34 a.m. on May 10, when she shifted onto her right side and pulled her legs toward her chest. After that, she did not move again.
That should have been the moment the system’s safeguards mattered most. Waterbury Police Department policy requires prisoners to be continuously monitored by video and that occupied cells be physically checked at least every thirty minutes. That is not an arbitrary rule. It exists because video monitoring alone can miss critical details: shallow breathing, a medical collapse, the difference between sleep and overdose, the gradual stillness that can signal death. Physical checks are meant to catch emergencies early, when there is still a chance to intervene.
But in Insogna’s case, those checks did not happen the way the policy demands. At noon, Matron Shanika Stakley left food at Insogna’s cell door and called out that lunch had arrived. Insogna did not respond. She appeared face down and motionless on the cell bench. Yet even then, there was no immediate emergency response, no urgent medical assessment, no escalation. It was not until 2:23 p.m. that Matron Stakley entered the cell and found Insogna unresponsive. By then, the report notes, her body showed signs consistent with death having occurred long earlier.
The autopsy details only sharpen the timeline. The medical examiner found acute intoxication from cocaine and fentanyl and later explained that the death likely involved cardiac arrhythmia from cocaine, respiratory depression from fentanyl, or a combination of both. Toxicology confirmed cocaine, fentanyl, and metabolites in her blood. Critically, the medical examiner emphasized the short half-life of cocaine, making it unlikely that effects from drugs consumed before arrest would still be driving death many hours later. Fixed lividity—an indicator that develops eight to twelve hours after death—supported the finding that Insogna likely died between approximately 5:30 a.m. and 9:30 a.m. In other words, she was almost certainly dead for hours before she was found.
The report also describes circumstantial evidence suggesting Insogna may have smuggled drugs into the police station and consumed them inside the cell. Cruiser video captured her repeatedly reaching behind her back toward the buttocks area during transport, consistent with concealing something. The report raises the possibility that drugs were secreted internally. Cell footage later shows a suspicious moment around 6:33 a.m. when Insogna was positioned over the toilet, reached toward her buttocks, then moved her hand toward her mouth, remained in that posture for over a minute, and then flushed. It is not conclusive proof, but investigators found it highly suspicious and consistent with the likely time window of death.
Even if you accept that Insogna managed to conceal and ingest narcotics while in custody, that does not explain what happened after 9:34 a.m., and that is where the Inspector General’s findings turn from tragic to damning. The report states plainly that it is “troubling” that from 9:34 a.m. on, Insogna remained motionless with no medical intervention. The report attributes this to the inattention of Matron Stakley, whose only job was to monitor Insogna. The Inspector General notes that Stakley had over twenty years of experience, and that a lack of movement for even one hour should have alerted her to a serious problem. Here, it was five hours. Five hours of stillness. Five hours where a basic welfare check could have changed the outcome. Five hours where the difference between “sleeping it off” and “dying” should have been obvious enough to demand action.
The Inspector General does not pretend the pressures of the job don’t exist. The report points out that Stakley was likely tired, having worked five of the previous seven shifts, including two overnight shifts, and was near the end of another double shift when Insogna was found. The report suggests she may have assumed the shift would be like countless others where nothing went wrong. But then it lands the conclusion that matters most: whatever the reason, she did not competently do her job.
That failure becomes even more alarming when you look at the prisoner log. Stakley made entries every thirty minutes from 7:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. stating the female prisoner was “ok.” The problem is that video evidence contradicts the idea that physical checks accompanied those entries. A corridor camera outside the women’s cells—also motion-activated—did not activate throughout the morning during the time those checks were supposedly being done. It activated at noon, when Stakley delivered food. It activated again at 2:23 p.m., when she entered the cell and discovered Insogna unresponsive. Those appear to be the only times she physically approached the cell during that period.
The Inspector General calls the log entries themselves troubling, because Insogna was not “ok” during the hours the log says she was. She was deceased. The entries also create the impression that corresponding physical checks occurred when they did not. The report notes that Stakley’s statement during an interview suggesting she conducted physical checks was misleading, and that the recorded evidence shows otherwise.
This isn’t a minor documentation issue. It goes to the heart of accountability. Logs are supposed to record reality. When logs document checks that didn’t happen, they become a paper shield for a system failure. They create the illusion of supervision after supervision has already broken down.
Waterbury Police policy requires physical checks every thirty minutes for a reason: it creates opportunities to catch medical crises early, when intervention is still possible. In Insogna’s case, the failure to comply with that policy meant she was discovered long after there was any chance of reversing an overdose. By the time she was found, her body was stiff and permanently discolored, a result completely inconsistent with the intent of the policy designed to protect people in custody.
The Inspector General ultimately concluded there was no criminal action and no use of force involved, and the death was accidental. The office closed the matter without further action. But the report does not read like closure for anyone who takes custodial responsibility seriously. It reads like a warning flare. A woman can die in a locked cell, under “continuous monitoring,” and remain motionless for hours while entries are written saying she is fine. The systems that exist to prevent in-custody death—physical checks, accurate logs, alert supervision—can collapse into routine and assumption, especially when staffing is strained, training is minimal, and fatigue is normalized.
The Office of the Inspector General concluded that Alyssa Insogna’s death was caused by fentanyl and cocaine. But what makes it hard to stomach is how long she lay motionless without intervention. Custody is supposed to mean the state has control. With control comes duty. And when that duty turns into inattention, the consequences aren’t theoretical. They are final.
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