Grieving families plead for office’s improvement

MEDICAL EXAMINER’S OFFICE

TULSA — Noah Osborn, a 5-year-old, refused to go to sleep — playing with a flashlight after being put to bed at his grandparents’ house in Tulsa.

The Osborn family was spending Thanksgiving at Noah’s grandparents’ home last November.

Steven Osborn said his son was full of energy when he made Noah turn off the flashlight and go to bed.

“He wasn’t sick. Didn’t have a fever. He seemed perfectly fine,” Osborn said. “I remember getting onto him because he was supposed to be asleep, and it was late, and he was making shadow puppets on the wall with the flashlight Grandpa had given him.”

In the morning, they found Noah’s body lying still in bed. He’d been dead for hours, and there was nothing they could do to bring him back.

Seven months later, the Osborns still have no idea why their son died.

Noah was taken from Tulsa to the medical examiner’s office in Oklahoma City, where officials continue to work on his autopsy report with no determination on his cause or manner of death.

While they wait for answers, Osborn is challenging Oklahoma lawmakers to improve Oklahoma’s medical examiner’s office — saying seven months is too long for grieving fam-

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The Osborns have been participating in groups for grieving parents since Noah died, and no other parents they’ve talked to have had to wait more than six weeks to get answers, Osborn said.

“It’s not like it’s going to fix anything or change anything,” he said. “It’s just really to know that the process is done … It’s almost like you’ve left the house and you have a feeling that there’s a door open or a light on or something. It’s just, we need to know that we have an answer, and it’s taken care of.”

The Osborns, Steven and Jenny, are both from Tulsa but moved to Portland, Ore., about four years ago for work. They added 3-year-old Theo to their family there, but Noah was born at St. Francis Hospital, Steven Osborn said.

Amy Elliot, chief administrative officer for the Oklahoma medical exam- iner’s office, said the office currently has more than 1,100 open and pending cases.

The medical examiner’s office receives about 18,000 referrals each year and of those, less than one-third involve a full autopsy or an external analysis of the body, as previously reported in the Tulsa World.

In 2009, the state agency lost its accreditation from the National Association of Medical Examiners, which it had held for 18 years.

Elliot said the office remains unaccredited because they need to update their buildings and staff to meet NAME requirements.

Elliot said there doesn’t appear to be anything special with Noah’s case, and the office is “conducting extensive testing.”

Steven Osborn said he started an online petition, which had about 350 supporters Friday, to tell lawmakers to increase staffing and funding to the struggling agency.

Moreover, Osborn is working to teach himself more about medical examiner’s offices and how they operate in other states.

“I’m an engineer by trade, and so my tendency is to fix a problem or inefficiency, and you can’t really do that unless you understand what the problem is,” he said.

Aside from the petition, Osborn is creating an online form he wants grieving parents or anyone else interested across the nation to fill out about their medical examiner’s office.

He said the form will be a crowdsourced path to collecting nationwide data on medical examiner’s offices so that he can learn more about best practices.

“All I really want to do is point out to the Oklahoma government that this is not really normal or acceptable for these types of inefficiencies in a medical examiner’s office,” Osborn said.