Colorado Law Blog

Just this week in Colorado, a hunter found the remains of a man killed in the crash of an all-terrain vehicle. Another Colorado hunting party discovered the remains of a northern Michigan man missing since 2003. A coroner says the hunters found the remains of Ray Wiggs, III of Alanson, Michigan. The 19-year-old and a friend traveled to Colorado in October of 2003 for a camping trip.

Outdoorsmen are an integral part of law enforcement, regularly finding human remains in areas killers hoped would keep secrets. But what is remote in August may be well-trodden in November; what was leaf-covered will reveal what's behind. Someone leaving the city for the quiet of autumn woods may find more than serenity or a six-point buck. He may find a crime scene.

Authorities welcome the discoveries. They want sportsmen to report their findings, even if there is some doubt the bones are human. "If you've never seen skeletal remains, you may assume it's some kind of animal and not follow through with a call," said Master Sgt. James Morissey of the Illinois State Police.

Some times the discovery is of one of their own. Boise County Sheriff's officials hope a hunter's discovery of human remains in the Badger Creek drainage last week will help solve the 5-year-old mystery of what happened to hunter Russell Reed. The 28-year-old Reed last was seen Nov. 9, 2002, when he was separated from his two elk hunting partners in the Foothills near Twin Springs in southeastern Boise County.

During the first week of this month, investigators in Madison County, Virginia began the hunt for clues after two hunters discovered human skeletal remains. Investigators recovered the remains, which were located in a wooded area where they also found clothes and shoes. The remains were sent to the Medical Examiner's office in Fairfax.

No one keeps statistics on human remains found by hunters. But this month alone, the following gruesome discoveries have been made by hunters:

• A deer hunter in Rhode Island found a woman's body.


• A hunter in Oklahoma found a man's body.


• A deer hunter came across human remains in northwestern Minnesota .The remains are believed to be of a person who died two to five years ago. Authorities said the person died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, and foul play was not suspected.


• Human remains were discovered by two hunters Sunday just north of the town of Paragon, Indiana. Investigators aren't sure how long the bones were there, how they got there or whether they belong to a male or female.

Earlier in October, outside Lebanon, Ohio, a hunter discovered a car in a dry creek bed and the nearby remains of two women who had vanished six months earlier while on a shopping trip. The women lived at an Ohio retirement home.

In an area such as greater St. Louis — with both a high incidence of murder and an abundance of sportsmen — worlds will collide. Deer and small-game hunters, fishermen — even a mushroom gatherer — have found human remains in recent years in the St. Louis area. When George Whitter, missing and presumed slain, could not be found an investigator suggested the mystery would have to fall to the recreationists.

"We might have to wait until hunting season begins," Jefferson County sheriff's Lt. Dave Marshak told a reporter. Five days later, a rabbit hunter in West Alton did indeed find bones that are believed to be Whitter's. The 35-year-old was last seen Aug. 30, leaving a bar in south St. Louis County with his friend Randy Greenman.

In a macabre twist to the story: On Sept. 22, a hunter found the remains of Greenman — murdered, police would say — near a road in a subdivision under construction.

In a similar strange twist of fate, during January 2006, Jason Mathenia and a friend went scavenging for deer antlers — or "shed hunting" — near the Norfolk Southern railroad tracks in Brooklyn, Illinois. They found the skeleton of a young woman. She has never been identified. Authorities said she was small, maybe 18 to 25, possibly of Hispanic descent. There was a colostomy bag nearby.

Nine months later, Mathenia saw news coverage of a body found by three hunters on Chouteau Island. It was that of Jaime Garcia, 27, of St. Louis, fatally stabbed. He reeled – just the day before he had been bow-hunting and was certain that he had been standing just a few feet from where Garcia's body was found.

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When one reflects upon the dangers of surgery, fire is not usually at the top of the list. Operating room fires, though less common than other potential hazards such as wrong-site surgery, have seriously injured and even killed patients. And now data shows that they are more common than previously believed.

Pennsylvania, which collects some of the most comprehensive statistics, has had 28 operating room fires a year for the past three years - 1 in about every 87,000 surgeries. The state's data, released in September, suggest that nationally there may be hundreds of such fires out of roughly 50 million inpatient and outpatient surgeries annually - not the 50 to 100 previously estimated by patient safety organizations. Massachusetts does not track operating room fires as closely as Pennsylvania, but health officials said hospitals in the Bay State have reported 18 fires or cases of smoke in operating rooms since 2005.

Several oversight groups, including the Department of Public Health and the Joint Commission, which inspects hospitals, have published warnings about surgical fires and recommended preventive measures since the early 2000s. For an overview of fires in surgical rooms see Preventing surgical fires.

In the past year, several professional organizations, including the American Academy of Otolaryngology - Head and Neck Surgery, the Association of periOperative Registered Nurses, and the American Society of Anesthesiologists, have also launched educational efforts.

Medical experts say such fires are a bizarre and persistent problem that often isn't reported by hospitals and may be growing because of increasing use of new technologies. Since June 1, ECRI, an independent healthcare research organization, has counted six fires alone that caused serious harm. The fires appear to be rare--only about 100 are reported, with about 20 patients injured and two or three killed each year.

Fires in operating rooms have a long history in medicine. Traditionally, anesthesiologists used highly flammable gases such as ether to put patients to sleep, and doctors and nurses were vigilant about preventing fires. But as doctors began using less flammable anesthetics in the 1980s, prevention efforts started to wane. At the same time, other fire hazards grew, including the use of 100 percent oxygen, which can leak into the air, increasing the combustibility of gauze and hair; alcohol-based skin cleansers; and advanced surgical tools such as lasers and electrocautery devices.

According to hospital safety oversight group ECRI, 44 percent of operating room fires occur during head, face, neck, or chest surgery, when electrical surgical tools are closest to the oxygen the patient is breathing.
As with other types of surgical errors, such as wrong-site surgery, poor communication between surgeons, nurses, and anesthesiologists can be the root of the problem. Operating room safety specialists recommend that doctors use less than 100 percent oxygen during head and neck surgery, which surgeons store hot instruments off the operating table when they are not in use, and that doctors wait two or three minutes until alcohol-based products have evaporated from the skin before using cautery tools.

In one recent case, the surgeon told health investigators in 2003 that he applied an alcohol-based "skin prep" to the patient’s abdomen and chest before removing her gallbladder to help prevent postoperative infections. The substance is sticky, he said, so after he finished the operation, he applied an alcohol-based cleaner to remove it. He said he then remembered that he promised to remove a mole, so he grabbed the cautery device, and a flash fire occurred. A surgical scrub technician told health officials that he heard a sound similar to the lighting of a grill. The surgeon said the fire was extinguished in two to three seconds, but the patient had severe burns over her abdomen which took weeks to heal.

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