Medical examiner gives La Crosse committee annual report

One suggestion was autopsies done in town

Only on TV shows like CSI do mysterious deaths get solved in an hour.

In real life, local governments can wait months to receive results from autopsies, often because of heavy demand.

La Crosse County medical examiner Tim Candahl says he’s still waiting for Dane County to issue a report on an unsolved local death from four months ago.

“Waiting on an autopsy since Feb. 12, which is really unacceptable,” Candahl told a La Crosse County committee Monday, giving his annual report. “They know about it. We’ll see how things go for timing on autopsies, which is very critical for law enforcement.”

Candahl has proposed a new Mayo hospital branch in Onalaska could help make local autopsies move more quickly.

“It sounds like it’s going to happen,” he said. “I will be in touch with a doctor in Rochester (Minn.) that handles their pathologist, and see if they (can) provide us with an autopsy suite. And then they would be able to come down here and do the autopsies in Onalaska.”

Candahl also suggests that La Crosse County might want to eventually hire its own forensic pathologist, so autopsies would not have to be sent outside the county.

La Crosse used to have autopsies done in Hastings, Minn. but that facility shut down. Candahl also mentioned the option of asking the University of Wisconsin-Madison Hospital.

Another part of Candalhl’s report was drug overdoses, especially ones that are fatal.

Candahl said the county is up to 12 deaths now, which is a record.

“Majority are not heroin, which is what everybody thinks it is,” Candahl said. “It’s running more prescription medication overdoes with opiates.”

Candahl tells a county committee that La Crosse County also set a record last year for suicides (26 reported). Only six of those self-inflicted deaths were from drugs or poison, while 12 people shot themselves and five more came from hangings.