Coroners scrutinized in wake of ID mixup

Published Friday, June 2, 2006

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) - A misidentification that led a Michigan couple to hold a bedside vigil for a daughter who was not theirs has led to scrutiny of local coroners, many of whom lack formal medical training yet are required to identify victims in chaotic conditions.

Forensic experts said misidentifications are rare. But they are more likely in cases where officials rely on visual IDs instead of medical tests - as was the case with two Taylor University students involved in an April 26 crash.

Freshman Whitney Cerak was pronounced dead at the scene after a university van was struck by a tractor-trailer as students and university employees returned to the school’s Upland campus, about 60 miles northeast of Indianapolis, after preparing for a banquet in Fort Wayne. Five people died.

Another student, identified as senior Laura VanRyn, suffered brain and other injuries. She was recuperating in a Michigan rehabilitation center this week when her family discovered the young woman they’d tended for five weeks was Cerak - and VanRyn had died.

"It’s one of forensic anthropologists’ greatest worries where the person you say it is comes into the lab and says, ‘I’m not dead,’ " said Joseph Hefner, assistant coordinator of the University of Tennessee’s forensic anthropology center.

Cases of mistaken identity have happened before.

Two years ago, Oksana Bohatch learned her 16-year-old son, Nathaniel Smith, had been misidentified by authorities and was about to be buried by another family. It wasn’t until a funeral for Smith’s friend, Patrick Bement, that Bohatch discovered she was at the bedside of someone else’s son.

"My heart aches," Bohatch, who lives in Michigan, wrote in an e-mail to The Associated Press after learning of the Taylor University case. "It is truly beyond belief that this could happen again."

Similar cases have been reported in the last decade in Alberta, Canada; New Jersey; Kentucky and Florida.

At a news conference Wednesday, Grant County Coroner Ron Mowery said there was never any indication that the two women’s identities had been confused.

"We left the hospital at 4 o’clock that morning believing that we had made the proper identifications," he said.

Mowery described a chaotic accident scene in which wallets and purses were strewn on the ground.

Mowery, a former county sheriff and Marion police chief, did not return a phone call yesterday from The Associated Press. At the news conference, he apologized, saying he had never experienced such a case of "tragedy upon tragedy" before.

Indiana’s 92 coroners are elected, and only half are certified by the state. Unlike their deputies, who must attend classes and pass a state exam, coroners are not required to undergo training, said Lisa Barker, executive director of the Indiana Coroner’s Training Board. The only statutory requirement for the job is a yearlong residency in the county the coroner serves, Barker said.

Most Indiana coroners have a medical or law enforcement background; Mowery is a former mayor and sheriff who was appointed to finish a previous coroner’s term. A barge pilot, two truck drivers and several office managers in the state also hold the positions.

Many states have similar systems, said John Hunsaker, president of the National Association of Medical Examiners.

"Some of those systems with lay coroners work reasonably well, even if the coroner is not a physician," said Hunsaker, who is Kentucky’s associate chief medical examiner. "And some of the systems are in varying degrees of disarray."

In the Taylor University case, Cerak was wearing a neck brace, had facial swelling and was placed on a respirator. No dental X-rays or DNA testing were used because officials had no reason to doubt the identifications, Mowery said.