I attended a conference in midtown Manhattan today and as my co-worker and I were leaving there was a deceased individual in the lobby and tons of police. There was an ambulance parked down the street, but no medical personnel were in the lobby or were attending to the man. He was covered with a sheet and there was police tape around the area.
Does this indicate that his death was the result of a crime or is it standard for only police to be involved if someone’s very obviously dead and cannot be revived? Or maybe the medical crew leaves once it’s clear the person’s dead? I always thought it was policy to attempt resuscitation until getting to the hospital, but I could be wrong.
Anyway, I was just wondering because so far nothing’s been reported about a murder being committed at that particular hotel and I could be jumping to conclusions based on the police presence. All I know is he wasn’t there two hours before.
I once saw a dead person who’d been pulled from the Hudson River and there were only police involved in that situation, but that was a VERY obviously dead person. Completely different from someone who may have simply had a heart attack in a hotel.
Unless it is painfully obvious (like fishing a 3 day old floater out of the river) EMS will be summoned to check. If it is a serious crime scene they would sometimes ask for just 1 person to enter the scene, check the patient to confirm, then leave. I saw several gunshots where PD had a cow because we ended up working the guy who was in very bad shape but definitely not dead in the middle of an evidence laden scene.
So odds are this was a crime scene then, not some dude who just had a stroke or heart attack? I have no idea what the cause of death could have been as most of his body was covered and I don’t recall hearing anything like gun shots. I just know it was a man because his hands and feet were sticking out and obviously belonged to a man.
I have (sadly) had to deal with this situation twice fairly recently, and the police came both times, even though the death was natural. They stay for a really long time too.
I’m sorry for your losses. Did the police leave the body in place though? That’s what I thought was strange (assuming it was someone who’d died naturally), especially without any EMS present.
Don’t jump to conclusions. It was very likely a natural death.
If someone passes without being in a medical facility it is classified as an unattended death.
“Unattended” by a doctor or medical professional.
EMS are likely the first on scene as most cases are called in as a medical. Once EMS says the person is unconscious, not breathing and no pulse they are coded as an Echo or code blue.
EMS cannot declare a person as dead. Notifications then go out to law enforcement, district attorney and the coroner. The district attorney will wait for information from the law enforcement as to whether or not a crime has been committed. If so, the area will become a crime scene and the body becomes evidence and the DA will come to the scene. After processing the body is released to the coroner for further processing including a medical examiner and an autopsy.
If there is no crime then the the body will be released to the coroner for further processing.
The process takes some time initially. Law enforcement has to make a certain determination whether a crime was committed. It takes some time for the coroner to arrive and package the body for removal. It’s not good for any business to have someone die on their premises. Responders know this and move the process along as fast as possible.
In my experiences they left the body in place until the coroner arrived, and then it stayed until the funeral home came. I think in a larger city the coroner takes it though, since there’s a morgue. And it takes a really really really long time. I mean, when my stepfather died a couple months ago it was around 5 hours before the body was removed. Maybe longer.
And thank you for your condolences. It’s been a very hard year.
Thanks for the information Baxter’s Dad**** and miss elizabeth****. I didn’t know that there was such a long process when someone dies naturally but unattended.
It doesn’t have to be a long process. It’s going to depend in part on what the situation is exactly- sometimes it’s going to be really easy to determine that the area is not a crime scene and sometimes it’s not. Sometimes the entity transporting the body isn’t busy and can get there quickly and sometimes they have five other bodies to pick up first. Sometimes a coroner comes out to the scene and a funeral home comes separately to transport the body and sometimes the coroner/medical examiner’s office also does the transporting. I’ve seen it take thirty minutes from police arrival to the body being removed by the medical examiner because everything lined up just right, and I’m sure it can take hours when it doesn’t
Not true, with caveats and color of state law. I’ve done it 3 times as an EMT in North Carolina.
In NC, an EMT can declare someone dead when the cause is obvious and not suspicious. Decapitation in a motor vehicle accident, heart attack, or death of a hospice patient are such examples. We would have to check for the usual signs, such as asystole and lividity, perform painful stimulus such as a sternum rub, and contact our medical control. If they concurred with our observations, the patient was declared dead on the spot. Medical Control usually signed the death certificate unless it as a hospice patient, then the patient’s physician did the job.
I would imagine in Manhattan whoever’s responsible for transporting to the body is always busy. I read that sometimes when someone gets hit by a train the body is discreetly moved to a storage room to be removed later so that service can be restored ASAP and not too many people see the body before they’re able to remove it.
So in NC an EMT can officiate the declaration and their name is on the death certificate?
If so it is a variance in State laws. In our State it takes a MD or coroner to sign off.
Yes, there are many times when the patient is quite expired by the time the first responders get there. There is no question. Here it is known as a DRT or Dead Right There. Incoming responders can then slow their response knowing the patient is already gone.
However the EMT’s have to call it a Code Blue not a Code Black because the patient hasn’t been officially declared.
The difference between State laws is interesting.
There is a difference between declaring (or pronouncing) someone dead and certifying someone dead. The certifier specifies the cause and manner of death and signs the death certificate. The pronouncer just says “He’s dead, Jim”, then goes and has a cold one, so to speak. The pronouncer’s name, if it’s not the same person as the certifier - and I’d wager more often than not it isn’t - doesn’t appear on the death certificate.
BLS EMT here,
I have Pronounced death many times, I have halted resuscitation and been spanked, but not cited.
We have resuscitation terminated frequently on the side of the road or on scene by ALS (paramedics).
We transport to county morgue and used to transport to funeral homes often.
We get called to pronounce death and leave until Law Enforcement is done with their work, then transport.
In all cases we are working on the call of the County Coroner whether by radio, phone or in person.
Contacting Coroner is the most time consuming of all in most cases.
In the next county east of me there is like my county, no Coroner transport service and the EMS in that county does not transport the deceased and the funeral homes transport all, to the extent that the funeral home crew responds to MVA 10-54’s and transport the body(s) to the Morgue or their business.
We provide EMS to our county line and the nearest Trama Center is in the next County and that makes for some interesting complications.