The Midwest Medical Examiner's Office investigated a homicide, three motor vehicle deaths, two drug-related deaths and seven suicides among its McLeod County cases in 2021.
The office, which acts independently of but often closely with the McLeod County Attorney's Office, is responsible for determining cause of death when it is in question and when it matters. Overall, it was called to 197 cases and assumed jurisdiction of 36. Mcleod County Attorney Michael Junge presented the report to the McLeod County Board on behalf of the medical examiner this past week.
"(Jurisdiction) means they are going to transport the body down to Anoka and they are going to do some kind of examination of that body to determine the cause of death," Junge told County Board members. "In the other cases where they decline, the cause of death is either known or it's not of significant public interest. (For example) if someone is 99 and dies in a nursing home, the exact cause of death isn't necessary to be known."
The 2021 report from Chief Medical Examiner A. Quinn Strobl shows the office conducted nine examinations of the outside and inside of a body, four examinations inside one part of a body, eight investigations of the outside of a body and 15 medical record reviews.
Overall, it investigated:
- one homicide,
- 17 deaths by natural causes,
- seven suicides, and
- 11 deaths due to accidents.
Of the accidental deaths:
- one was from asphyxia,
- seven were from blunt force injuries (three of those from motor vehicle crashes),
- two were due to drug or substance abuse, and
- one was due to a fire.
"Unfortunately, with the pandemic, the things that cause death amongst people that aren't of age that they ought to be dying, such as suicide, overdose and traffic crashes, those have all gone up," Junge said, noting the shift has caused life expectancy to go down in the U.S. "Particularly with suicides, those have ranged anywhere from two to nine in a given year in the last six years in McLeod County. This past year there were seven. The causes of that, it's people of all ages, it's with weapons such as guns, it's by hanging, it's by pills."
The homicide case, which happened in Plato in late July, has not yet been resolved. The county's overdose deaths, Junge said, are part of a national trend showing higher rates of such incidents.
"It shows a part of the problem of the pandemic. People aren't getting the help that they need. That includes the dysfunction in our court system," Junge said.
He also highlighted deaths on Minnesota roads as a growing concern.
"When I started back in 1882, we were killing about 950 people a year on Minnesota roads, give or take," Junge said. "That went down to about 300 in the early 2010s. That is now going up into the mid 400s as a result of worse driving, faster speeds, inattentive driving and things of that sort. Those deaths tend to be across a wider age spectrum. It's the younger drivers who tend to drive with less care while impaired at faster speeds."
The overall message from the medical examiner's office is to slow down, not look at phone when driving and us prescriptions as intended.
RECENT HISTORY
The following data from the medical examiner shows death data from the past five years in McLeod County
Homicides: zero from 2016-2020, one in 2021.
Motor vehicle crashes: one in 2016, three in 2017, seven in 2018, one in 2019, one in 2020, three in 2021
Accidents not related to motor vehicles: 10 in 2016, five in 2017, 10 in 2018, nine in 2019, 17 in 2020, eight in 2021
Suicides: nine in 2016, two in 2017, four in 2018, three in 2019, five in 2020, seven in 2021
Natural causes: eight in 2016, five in 2017, 11 in 2018, 11 in 2019, 18 in 2020, 17 in 2021
