Death investigators cut and run
Pair slam door upon exit
BY TERRY SCHMIDA
The Monroe County Medical Examiner’s office received yet another black eye on May 13, with the firing and fleeing respectively of two of its four staff members.
Chief Medical Officer Dr. Thomas Beaver, who has been on the job less than a year, is said to have axed death investigator Ryan Moe, whereupon his colleague, Zack Smith immediately left his post. Smith had previously served Beaver his resignation, but split early in protest of the Moe decision.
Already the office is facing an audit and questions about Beaver’s leadership and competency stemming from allegations earlier in the year that he exercised poor judgment in transporting bodies in an uncovered pickup truck with no markings to indicate its official status as an M.E. vehicle.
The audit is the result of objections lodged by neighbors in a condominium complex off Coco Plum Drive, in Marathon, who also apparently documented the corpses being casually placed in the back of the truck, and sent photos, along with the complaints, to both the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office, and the State Attorney’s Office.
The grievances brought about a meeting between County Administrator Roman Gastesi, County Attorney Bob Shillinger, Sheriff Rick Ramsey, State Attorney Catherine Vogel, and Clerk of the Court Amy Heavilin, to discuss the body transport issue, as well as other remonstrations lodged against Beaver.
The upshot was Gastesi’s verbal request to Heavilin’s office for the audit, which is allowed for in the M.E. Office’s contract.
“We haven’t done an audit of the Medical Examiner’s Office for quite a while,” Gastesi said at the time. “So we thought now would be a good time to do it, to get a baseline of where they’re at.”
Beaver agreed to make changes in the way he collects bodies, but the audit remained.
Now his office faces the investigation severely shorthanded, and with bad blood trailing out the door from the M.E.’s former charges.
Beaver had been a controversial choice to head the office., when it was revealed to a hiring committee including both Vogel and Ramsey, that the former chief forensic pathologist in Alameda County, Calif. had been “Baker-Acted” for 72 hours in 2003, following a threatened suicide attempt in Daytona Beach.
That issue was “addressed” during Beaver’s job interview, Vogel said last month.
No new leads or incidents
in brown pelican cruelty case
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service continue to pool their resources to catch the party or parties responsible for a spate of brown pelican maulings, as the trail appears to have grown cold.
No new incidents have been reported of the federally-protected migratory birds’ being slashed or beaten, though the reward for information has been upped to $18,000.
More than a dozen instances have been reported in the area between Sugarloaf and Big Pine keys, since December, with the latest taking place in March.
[livemarket market_name="KONK Life LiveMarket" limit=3 category=“” show_signup=0 show_more=0]
No Comment