Boone County Coroner Missy Rittinger reminded the Boone County Fiscal Court that the state medical examiner’s office is coming to the region, though it’s still unclear when.
She said the medical examiner’s office has been closed since 2017 due to staffing problems, but a new one is expected to open in NKY in the coming years.
“Kentucky could not get a forensic pathologist to work up here because Kentucky was the lowest paid forensic pathologist in the nation,” Rittinger said.
Last year, legislation went through that dramatically improved the salaries for the medical examiner’s office, and there was money allocated to reopen it.
“We got news last week it’s going to happen in the next couple of years and it’s going to be in NKY,” Rittinger said. “We will no longer have to send any of our autopsies to Louisville which is very expensive and very hard on the families.”
In the last two years, the coroner’s office caseload increased by 25%, resulting in major changes, according to Rittinger, like their process for developing policy.
“This has to do with working with emergency management and the county attorney on release of information. When we’re allowed to go into a scene or not has become an issue,” she said.
Rittinger recalled a time when she worked with the county attorney after body parts were found at the Bavarian Dump.
“We get there, we do a death investigation and it turns out to be two right legs,” she said. “We look at everything and it turns out to be a medical waste dump site, so we worked with the county attorney to dispose of them and to make sure we do it properly.”
There’s also a new protocol when it comes to drug overdoses that result in deaths in the county in terms of who is charged and how to go about it.
“In essence we’re going after the drug dealers from the scene, getting what we need in real time from that scene and going from there,” said Rittinger.
In the past five years, there have been five cases that have gone to the prosecutor’s office in the county against those dealers, one is in federal court right now.
There’s been one conviction, one is scheduled for trial beginning on April 1, another resulted in a confession and sentencing and the last one just happened two weeks ago. Charges for the most recent one haven’t been announced yet but Rittinger stated that it will be a “big one.”
Rittinger also added that all overdoses are reported to the University of Kentucky’s Pathology and Laboratory research. The coroner also reports the county’s homicides and deaths by suicide to them.
The Boone County Coroner is also working to better community outreach and education.
Rittinger recently developed a website that can be found on the county’s page, as well as a Facebook page where press releases from the Boone County Sheriff’s Office can be found along with autopsies and corner’s reports of toxicology.
Community education from the coroner includes presentations at the libraries within the county on the primary role of the coroner, general explanation of what they do and how they do it.
Rittinger also worked with the Boone County Public Schools to form their Truth of Consequences Program for middle schoolers, where students are given a scenario about a drunken driver.
“They go through the stages of what happens next from law enforcement’s point of view to the judge, to the funeral home and then the coroner,” said Rittinger. “We show them what happens when you make these sort of decisions.”
The coroner also started an intern program with the Erlanger Police Department for high schoolers that have an interest in pursuing a career in law enforcement.