Ryan Edelen walked out of the emergency room at HCA HealthONE Aurora, stepped into a public bathroom down the hall, and locked the door. He never came out.
For 14 days, his body lay inside while patients, visitors, and staff walked right past.Ryan and his family deserve answers.
Sign the petition demanding the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment open a full investigation into how HCA HealthONE Aurora let this happen!On the morning of August 7, 2025, Ryan was found unresponsive with no pulse near the Cherry Creek Trail. A bystander started CPR, and paramedics gave him Narcan, a drug that reverses opioid overdoses. He came to and was taken to the hospital.
About two and a half hours after he arrived, Ryan was discharged. His own doctor wrote that what happened to him was serious, that the cause was still unclear, and that he needed more monitoring. A national group of emergency doctors recommends watching patients for at least four hours after their last dose of Narcan, because it can wear off before the drugs that caused the overdose do. Ryan was sent out well before that.
Minutes later, he locked himself in a single-person bathroom on the way to the exit. That bathroom sits next to a staff restroom and near a nurses' lounge. Cleaning staff knocked on the door again and again, assumed someone was using it, and moved on. No one kept a record of when the bathroom was checked.
For two weeks, Ryan's body lay just feet from people who walked that hallway every day. He was finally found on August 21, and
his body had already begun to decompose.Ryan's family described him as having a big heart and a good soul. He struggled with addiction for years, which made his life complicated --
but not any less worthy. Substance use disorders affect
millions of people in the United States. Addiction is a medical condition, and people living with it deserve the same care and compassion as any other patient. Instead, Ryan's life ended inside a hospital, and no one noticed he was gone for two weeks.
His family deserves to know every detail of what happened -- and future patients deserve to be protected from the same fate.The state routinely investigates when patients leave a hospital without being discharged. But because Ryan had been discharged just before he walked into that bathroom,
no state investigation ever happened. More than a year later, his family is still asking how a man could lie dead inside a busy hospital for two weeks without anyone noticing.
The hospital has refused to answer specific questions about what went wrong. It has offered only a short statement of sympathy. That is not accountability.
Colorado's health department oversees hospitals in the state. It has the power to look into everything that failed Ryan at HCA HealthONE Aurora, from the decision to discharge him to the two weeks no one checked a locked bathroom. A technicality should not be the reason a death like this goes unexamined, and no other family should be left with these questions.
Sign the petition and tell the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment to investigate HCA HealthONE Aurora now, so no one else is left behind a locked door for 14 days! 