56°
Name:
Screen name:
Email:
Position: Coroner's Report
Email: chuser@durangoherald.com
In May, Frank J. Kerrigan, 82, got the phone call every grieving family longs for. “Your son is alive,” said Bill Shinker, a family friend who had been a pall bearer for Kerrigan’s son, Frank, 11...
DATE: Sept. 1, 2017 | COLUMN: Coroner's Report
Sarah Traynor, 7 years old and mildly autistic, was found hanging by a jump rope attached to the top bar of a swing set in her backyard. The Supreme Court of Victoria at Melbourne, Australia,...
DATE: Aug. 4, 2017 | COLUMN: Coroner's Report
Quaaludes were popular before my time, but I saw cocaine and methamphetamine sweep the country and witnessed a renewed taste for heroin. Now, we have the “opioid crisis” – an epidemic of deaths...
DATE: July 1, 2017 | COLUMN: Coroner's Report
Medical examiners play mind games a lot. We create hypothetical death scenarios and work out the best certifications – the forensic pathology equivalent of Sudoku puzzles. We play these games alone...
DATE: June 2, 2017 | COLUMN: Coroner's Report
The Colorado law that legalizes physician-assisted suicide for the terminally ill requires certifiers to classify such deaths as natural. The cause of death must be the terminal illness, not drug...
DATE: May 6, 2017 | COLUMN: Coroner's Report
Tanisha Anderson, a 37-year-old black woman, died during a struggle with Cleveland police in 2014. Her death was certified a homicide, but a judge refused to allow the medical examiner to testify...
DATE: April 1, 2017 | COLUMN: Coroner's Report
Forensic pathology has been a recognized medical subspecialty only since 1959, and I fear that for my profession, time is already running out. Doctors need to know why people die so they can...
DATE: March 2, 2017 | COLUMN: Coroner's Report
Sometimes medical examiners have to decide whether it’s worth it to do everything they can. Families may think no stone should be left unturned in the effort to identify a body or determine a cause...
DATE: Feb. 2, 2017 | COLUMN: Coroner's Report
When a child dies because somebody did something stupid, should medical examiners certify the manner of death as an accident because no harm was intended? Or homicide – stupidicide, we sometimes...
DATE: Jan. 4, 2017 | COLUMN: Coroner's Report
The Mountain West is a place for dreams. The spectacular vistas, primeval forests and the hardy, independent folks who live there are romanticized in our national history and popular culture. It...
DATE: Nov. 30, 2016 | COLUMN: Coroner's Report
If a competent elder refuses food, water or essential medical treatment and dies as a direct result, is that death a suicide? When a colleague brought up the topic recently, I realized that in 30...
DATE: Nov. 2, 2016 | COLUMN: Coroner's Report
In April of 2015, Freddie Carlos Gray Jr., a 25-year-old black man, broke his neck while in police custody in Baltimore. The medical examiner ruled Gray’s death a homicide, but no officer was...
DATE: Oct. 5, 2016 | COLUMN: Coroner's Report
