Witnesses describe chaos as man collapses at Waikato Hospital emergency department
Two Hamilton women have described harrowing scenes at Waikato Hospital’s emergency department as staff tried to revive a man found unresponsive in the ED waiting room toilets.
Zanae Kahu King, 23, was there early on Tuesday morning for a chest infection. She spoke briefly with the man then notified security after hearing a “bang” in the ED’s toilet cubicle.
“He got up to go to the toilet and asked me, ‘is this toilet free?’ And I said ‘yes, it’s free’.
“I went into the toilet on the other side and then came out and I heard a big bang, and I walked back in and he was on the ground,” she told the Herald.
As staff came rushing to help, King instinctively filmed video of what happened from outside the ED, telling the Herald she knew the man’s whānau would have questions.
Ian Martin, Health NZ’s medical director of medicine at Waikato Hospital, confirmed that a “serious adverse event” review is underway and is expected to be completed “within two months”.
“We would like to offer our sympathies to the family of the deceased. We have spoken with them ... and we are continuing to offer them support,” he said.
The Herald has seen two video clips of events at the ED and decided not to broadcast the video out of respect for the family of the deceased.
One video, timestamped 1.13am on Tuesday, shows a staff member on top of a man on a hospital gurney, urgently performing chest compressions as he is rushed from the waiting room.
Another video taken moments before staff attempted CPR shows staff holding up a white sheet around the man as others in the packed waiting room looked on.
“It was pretty upsetting and sad. I feel for the whānau,” King said.
King said the ED waiting room was “packed” with around 30 to 40 patients. She didn’t blame staff who, she believed, “did their best”.
“It’s not their fault because they’re understaffed,” she told the Herald.
“I feel for the nurses having tried their best and not being able to succeed, and I also feel for the whānau that had to answer that phone call.”
Chaotic scenes: ‘Check the pulse’
Grace Minardo was also at the ED with her husband and 2-year-old daughter.
They were sitting near the ED toilets when her husband got up to use one. He noticed one of the toilet doors was closed but not locked.
Minardo said her husband opened the door and saw the man leaning backwards on the toilet seat.
“He got a fright and came out and said, ‘There is someone who has fallen asleep’, because that’s what he thought had happened,” she told the Herald.
She then told a nurse someone appeared to be asleep in the toilet, and the nurse alerted the front desk.
Minardo went to use another, unoccupied toilet when, she said, “the doctors came running”.
“We heard a whole lot of commotion: ‘Pass me the adrenaline. Check the pulse; there is no pulse’.
“There were a lot of people, and everybody was very upset.”
She said her husband was traumatised and having flashbacks after finding the man and she felt upset for the man’s family.
“It was a horror situation. It should not have happened.”
Minardo said she and her family waited at the ED for nine hours to be seen, but others had been waiting for up to 13 hours.
She wanted to see “drastic and quick” action from health authorities to fix the “shocking” waiting times.
‘He was asking for help’
Earlier in the night, King said she saw the man in pain and speaking to staff.
“He was asking for help. He was complaining about how he’d been waiting for such a long time. He was asking staff for some type of medication because he was in pain,” she told the Herald.
The Herald revealed on Tuesday concerns from a hospital worker who said the man spent “nine hours waiting” to be seen.
The source said they wanted the information published because they feared “more lives will be lost” unless pressure was put on Health New Zealand.
King corroborated the information from the hospital worker saying the man was at the ED for nine to 10 hours.
She believed this was about a lot more than a single tragic event.
“It reflects a health system that has been under immense pressure for years. Our hospitals have faced ongoing staff shortages ... and too many dedicated healthcare workers feel exhausted, undervalued and underpaid.”
The warning signs
The Herald revealed on Monday that Waikato Hospital received more than 300 patients at the ED in a single day last month.
Not even in the depths of winter, June 8 was the busiest day ED nurse Tracy Chisholm had seen in her career.
“That was the worst day I’ve seen in 18 years. It was standing room only,” she said.
Chisholm, who spoke to the Herald in her capacity as a delegate for the New Zealand Nurses Organisation (NZNO), said the situation put patients at risk.
“We brought out extra chairs ... and there were still people standing. It was at capacity,” she told the Herald.
Her colleague, NZNO president Anne Daniels, said the organisation was “extremely concerned” that Waikato ED is “dangerously understaffed”.
She believed the Government’s “patch-up” jobs to arrest the issues didn’t go far enough.
Health Minister Simeon Brown said the death was a “terrible situation”.
Asked whether it was acceptable that a patient had been waiting nine hours, Brown said “clearly, it’s not good enough”.
Brown refused to say whether he could guarantee such an incident would not happen again.
“My heart goes out to the family and loved ones of the person who has died,” he told the Herald.
It’s not the first time a patient has died while waiting at a hospital emergency department.
In 2024, the Herald revealed the case of Tony Knott who died in a toilet while waiting to be assessed at Middlemore Hospital’s “severely overcrowded” emergency department.
His family told the Herald they believed his death was preventable, and that he “fell through the cracks in a broken system”.
Herald OIA data
Data obtained by the Herald under the Official Information Act shows that from September 2024 to December 2025, the total number of ED staff across all 20 health districts nationally increased by 294, from 5527 to 5821.
However, while the national total, which includes corporate staff, was edging upwards, the data shows some districts saw a decrease in frontline staff such as nurses and senior medical officers.
The Herald asked Brown last month why some districts showed staff decreases, but he said the overall national total was the most important figure.
He said the Herald’s national data on health worker numbers showed the Government was making progress.
“There are more frontline staff and more nurses working in our emergency departments than ever before, and patients are being seen and treated faster as a result,” he told the Herald.
Neither the NZNO nor the Australasian College of Emergency Medicine believed that was a fair reflection of the reality.
Michael Morrah is a senior investigative reporter/team leader at the Herald. He won News Journalist of the Year at the 2025 Voyager Media Awards and has twice been named reporter of the year at the NZ Television Awards. He has been a broadcast journalist for 20 years and joined the Herald’s video team in July 2024.