Meeting of February 23, 2021

[Music] good afternoon welcome to the february 23rd meeting of hardin county fiscal court i remind you this is a voting medium if you have cell phones so please turn them off or put them in the vibrate mode we'll begin with a roll call if you would miss dolly clam here wiseman here thompson peter ronnie goodman eric kane here judge barry yeah easter egg doug goodman here william here mr clem will lead us in the invocation and mr ronnie goodman will lead us in the pledge if you'll please stand please pray with me heavenly father we indeed thank you for this beautiful day that you've given us father we especially thank you for the the warmth of the sunshine that you gave us father uh it just feels so good to to walk out and to breathe fresh air and to see that brights soon the warmth that it shows his

father's only only uh greater love that you've shown us through your son jesus and father we just pray for our nation and pray for the communities that's been hit hard for with these stolen damage and father those that are still battling with the covet father we just lit them up father we ask you to be with us during this meeting today and father just lead guide and direct us and decisions that we make for the community we serve these things we ask in our son jesus name amen please join me in pleasure to the flag of the united states of america to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all all right we'll start off with elected office reports and first up we have the coroner dr lee afternoon judge members court good afternoon good to be here today glad to have you

here today good to see you got the yearly report this time instead of our bi-monthly just for the year 2020 and uh you got your packet before you i guess yeah probably all set up thank you first page uh first letter our first first page painting is uh 2000 our 1015 case the first time we've been over a thousand cases and uh and anytime i guess in hard gas i've been at it for over 30 years myself and like last year we may have had maybe 8 50. i can't remember the final total first time breaking a thousand so we've been busy and you see the breakdown of the four categories of manner of death accident homicide natural and suicide you see those numbers there that naturals obviously the most number any heart attacks cancers medical events not over 900 and then the next slide for those that like the pictures the pie chart showing again that 91 percent of naturals most cases are that and the next slide will break down the

cause of death that's a medical reason why they die and you see the overdose is the highest of those accidentally and one time back in the earlier years i think most of those were like traffic fatalities but the drugs have overtaken things it's unbelievable the number of drugs this week working out days and the second category will be the car wrecks the 21 percent you see there and then the others the falls drowning and i'm not sure what exactly the other is i can't recall frankly next page would be the homicides and the cause of death in those cases gunshot is the majority 83 percent and then stabbing 17 of those 10 cases that we had in 2020. suicide for that year total of 18 and the gun shot again was the number one killer of the suicides hanging which is surprisingly that many 28 and overdoses 11 percent and the demographics on the next slide breaks down the deaths according to age and race and gender and

you can look through your numbers there just males outnumbered the females you see the bottom part of their sheet there and then the angel has its 30-39 year bracket seems to be the most common numbers next slide will be the frequent drugs detected in our drug related deaths you see there at the bottom of fentanyl outnumbers all the others quite a bit 26 cases for the year and then the meth right behind it 27 and then you get into some of the various prescription type appeals and so forth next slide will be same thing just the in the patch art fentanyl the number one killer and math second and on down the line and then the total cases and this was uh say the first time over a thousand cases in 2020 and it's a 24 increase from the 821 is what the previous year was so it's

just keeps on climbing and that's this chart through one of my favorite charts it shows kind of a steady incline as the year is going and we could take it back to my first year's corner in 1986 and i had 146 cases i think we had total judge back so we've come a long way from 146 population different factors other stuff okay next slide this is a busy slide as i've said before talking about autopsies bequeathals cremations and transport from the bodies uh autopsies up a little bit from last year partly due to the number of cases and maybe the complexity of some of those cases that needed expertise from the medical examiner's office who are forensic pathologists a little higher ranking that we lay corners and deputy corners are the quethos is down last year we had quite a few people donating their bodies and uofl i just talked to them about a week ago uofl and uk both are suspending body donations for the time being and covet is a big factor in that i'm not sure about cincinnati we've a couple of years ago we had some go there and then the body farm you may have heard about them in knoxville tennessee

another chance of folks donating their bodies for science the middle columns there the cremation numbers continue to climb and then you drop down to the county cremations which is the energy program that we have and it's it's down up from last year but down from a couple years ago it fluctuates a good bit and the last two columns represent the transportation the ems when they go to the scene sometimes they will transport the decedent back to the corner office as you know recently we've been now that we have our truck the corner truck with you guys helpful thank you for that back to shayna without on the case a little while ago out and the other side of ronnieville and had to go back maybe a half mile or more off the main road and had to use the four-wheel drive and there were two or three state troopers that were stuck back there with their vehicles so so so we're thankful for that vehicle so our corner transports you see we did 96 um deliveries if you want to call it that from the residence or the highway or wherever back to the corner office compared to 16 dms folks in here

and that number's coming down us if but uh you and thanks to you all for all the participation that you've been for us and uh i've just got a couple more slides to leave the next one the residency of the decedents and you've seen these before the e-town i mean the higher populated city and the more chances of death i guess with the industry and the farming community there are different sources of types of this or forty four percent in the reactive second population that the about twenty four percent of the deaths have originated the decedents from originated from them from town that is when you get down the bottom part of the chart that unincorporated areas eleven percent out of the county and out of the state those are usually like interstate deaths maybe people from out of hardin county that are brought in and die in our county and uh those that are from outside of county this next slide shaina has broken that down to the counties that have provided and these are usually hospital cases somebody like for me county or in fact