GRAND JUNCTION, Colo., Oct. 5 (UPI) -- A Colorado coroner has ruled a registered organ donor who attempted suicide died from the removal of his organs, not a bullet wound in his head.
Mark Young's review of medical records of the 31-year-old Montrose County man resulted in the determination that William Rardin was still alive when his pancreas, liver, heart and kidneys were removed, thus making his death a homicide, the Denver Post reported Tuesday.
Young, who said more tests should have been performed on Rardin to conclude definitively he was brain-dead, said the autopsy showed he would have died within days in any case.
Rardin's death certificate showed he died Sept. 28, when a transplant team at St. Mary's Hospital in Grand Junction finished removing his organs. He had been certified dead two days earlier at Montrose Memorial Hospital where he had been taken by ambulance. No tests to determine brain death were performed and he was airlifted to St. Mary's the same day for organ harvesting.
Rardin's family agreed to the donation while Rardin's heart was kept beating artificially.
A spokeswoman for the Donor Alliance, the organ procurement organization serving Colorado and Wyoming, said she was troubled by Young's decision to call the death a homicide.
