The State : Coroner Suspends 2

Two Riverside County coroner’s office workers were suspended after a possible murder victim was mistakenly released to a mortuary and cremated before autopsy surgeons had a chance to examine the body. Coroner Raymond Carrillo notified the employees, whose names were not disclosed, that they were being suspended--one for five days and the other for three days. The suspensions came after it was discovered that an employee, thinking she was releasing the body of a man, released to a mortuary the body of Julie Ann McGhee, 30, of Cathedral City, without looking inside the body bag. A jogger had found the woman’s decomposed body July 17. When Cathedral City police officers drove to the coroner’s Riverside office to attend an autopsy, they learned the woman’s body had been released on July 20 and cremated.