WILLIAMSPORT – More and more county coroners are ruling overdose deaths as homicides instead of accidental deaths. One of those people is Lycoming County Coroner Charles Kiessling, who was a recent guest on WKOK Sunrise.
Kiessling said, “We’ve really honed in on looking at the true definition of homicide, which is the death of an individual at the hands of another. My feeling after seeing these tragic losses of young peoples lives, I said, wait a minute, these are not accidents anymore. Clearly someone caused this person’s death by doing an illegal activity.”
Kiessling says this will mean more thorough investigations, “We are going to be looking at every case, and then if we feel that clearly the death was at the hands of another, we will be ruling these cases homicides.”
Kiessling continued, “The deaths are still going to be investigated the same way. This doesn’t change what we have been doing. We are still working with law enforcement, looking at all these cases and trying to connect the dots and hold people accountable.”
He says they want to try to get this under control because young people are dying every day. You can hear more from Kiessling from WKOK Sunrise online at www.wkok.com.
