Monessen police raid Washington County coroner鈥檚 office for autopsy report
Monessen police raid Washington County coroner鈥檚 office for autopsy report
Police investigating a drug death in Monessen raided the Washington County coroner’s office Wednesday after authorities said they were unable to get an autopsy report and other investigative materials surrounding a man’s deadly overdose last year.
Detectives with the Monessen Police Department requested the search warrant after they spent months asking Coroner Timothy Warco’s office to provide death investigation records into the overdose in November, but were stonewalled by his demands that they pay $600 in fees.
The police department – with support from Westmoreland County District Attorney Nicole Ziccarelli – filed for the search warrant at the Washington County Courthouse and it was granted by Judge Michael Lucas. The officers then went to Warco’s row office at 371 W. Chestnut St. in Washington and served it before retrieving various documents related to the Nov. 22 death of Jordan Labryer, according to the affidavit filed at the Clerk of Courts office in the courthouse.
“This is uncharted territory for our office,” Ziccarelli said in a written statement. “As a law enforcement agency, Monessen Police Department is entitled to this material pursuant to a criminal investigation and prosecution. Pursuing justice and accountability shouldn’t come at a cost to the victim, the victim’s family or public safety.”
Labryer was at a Monessen residence on Nov. 21 when he and a friend overdosed while using cocaine, according to the affidavit. First responders administered Naloxone to the friend, who survived, but Labryer, 25, of Donora, was taken by ambulance to Penn Highlands Mon Valley Hospital in Carroll Township, where he died the next morning. Because his death occurred in Washington County, Warco’s office had jurisdiction to handle the investigation to determine the cause and manner of his death.
Tim Uhrich, who serves as Warco’s solicitor, cited a section of the state’s Coroners Statute that allows the office to charge fees for services requested by an out-of-county agency. He said they charged $500 for the autopsy and another $100 for the death records in an attempt to cover the $2,500 to hire a pathologist to perform that work.
“When they reached out to us for the autopsy reports, we told them there is a fee for out-of-county services,” Uhrich said. “They said they didn’t want to pay the fee and weren’t going to pay the fee. … There is a lot of back and forth, but there are fees that can be charged if another county requests services.”
Uhrich said the Monessen police officers first tried to serve the office with a search warrant signed Wednesday morning by a Westmoreland County Court of Common Pleas judge, but they refused to comply with it because of jurisdictional issues. The officers then went to the Washington County Courthouse and requested Lucas approve their search warrant, which he did.
Uhrich said Warco’s office did not want to perform a full autopsy and would have preferred to draw blood to test for toxicology, hence the reason that the coroner was adamant about charging Monessen police for the services.
Melanie Jones, who is the spokeswoman for the Westmoreland County district attorney, rebutted that claim and said there is documentation indicating that Warco’s office “requested and authorized” the autopsy. She pointed to a different statute in which government agencies are not to be charged for such services.
The legal battle mirrors a similar situation between Warco and Washington County District Attorney Jason Walsh during a lengthy dispute about the coroner releasing autopsy and death investigation records to law enforcement.
In early November, county detectives, state police troopers and local police officers served a search warrant on the coroner’s office at Walsh’s direction in order to retrieve autopsy reports and other information for five deaths under investigation. It was the second time in less than two years in which county detectives seized documents from Warco’s office. In late November and early December 2023, detectives took numerous investigative documents from Warco’s office and then later at Uhrich’s law office in Carnegie.
Peters Township officials sued Warco in December over its refusal to turn over autopsy reports and other records to the municipality’s police department, which they claim has hampered their investigation into a baby’s death last year.