I called 1 the office of the Volusia County Medical Examiner to see if I could get an update on whether they had decided to do an autopsy on my mother’s body. I asked the woman who answered the phone if I could speak to Mr. Burch. She said, “Can I tell him who’s calling?” and I replied, “Sure. This is David Gagne.”
Bob Burch picked up the phone and said, “Hello.”
I said that I was me and he told me that they had “requested additional records” and had not yet made a decision. I told him that I was only calling because he had said that I would have an answer by this afternoon and it was four o’clock. He said that Dr. Hermann “had reviewed some of” the records and they were waiting for more, including the “ambulance run sheets”. I asked him if he could be more specific, if he was waiting on records from Halifax hospital or from the nursing home or … and he said he was waiting on “all of it”.
I told Bob that the hospital 2 had specifically told me (and Detective Whittier) that they had received no paperwork, medical records, or documentation at all from the paramedics or nursing home when my mom arrived there. He said that was very common, that the ambulances, “never drop off their run sheets”.
I told Bob that they could call me if they had any questions about anything at all and he said, “Oh, we’re gonna get the answers.”
I thanked him and said goodbye.
The entire call lasted four minutes.
1 Note that this website is published on the West coast; this call started at 4:03 PM EDT.
2 Fish Memorial Hospital in Deland, FL, where my mother was pronounced dead