There are currently 180 bodies stacked up at the Los Angeles morgue amid delays in processing that have forced families to wait weeks to get the bodies of the their loved ones.
For example, Deontra LaJohn Gant was shot to death in June 2015, but his body was dark from decomposition by the time it was returned to the family weeks later.
According to the Los Angeles Times, “Toxicology tests are taking more than six months to complete, with a backlog of about several hundred.” This backlog led to the example of 19-year-old Katie Dix, “who went into respiratory and cardiac distress seven months ago at a music festival.” Although “the Cal State Channel Islands student’s body has been released to her family, the cause of her death still hasn’t been determined.”
On Friday, the delay resulted in the resignation of county medical examiner Mark Fajardo, who is returning to “his former position as the chief forensic pathologist in Riverside County.” When Fajardo was hired, the 2013 budget for the examiner’s office was “$32 million.” He said that wasn’t enough. The budget for the most recent fiscal year–which came in at $35.5 million–was not significantly increased. Fajardo said he believed the examiner’s office “served the people of Los Angeles very well” considering the budget.
Other staff in the examiner’s officer are also “quitting for better positions elsewhere.”
AWR Hawkins is the Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.