The Los Angeles County Department of Medical Examiner is the medical examiner's office of the government of the County of Los Angeles, California. It is located at the Boyle Heights neighborhood in

Los Angeles Los Angeles, often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, most populous city in the U.S. state of California, and the commercial, Financial District, Los Angeles, financial, and Culture of Los Angeles, ...

. The office was created in its present form on December 17, 1920, by an ordinance approved by the

Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors (LACBOS) is the five-member Board of Supervisors, governing body of Los Angeles County, California, United States. History On April 1, 1850 the citizens of Los Angeles elected a three-man Court of Se ...

, although it has existed in some form since the appointment of the first county coroner in 1850. The office was previously known as the Los Angeles County Department of Medical Examiner-Coroner and the Los Angeles County Department of Coroner.

List of chief medical examiners

The Los Angeles County Department of Medical Examiner recognized the following individuals as its leaders in the agency's history.

Former administrative roles

Recent chief medical examiners

Mark A. Fajardo

On July 9, 2010, the Board of Supervisors approved the appointment of Mark A. Fajardo, the Chief Forensic Pathologist at Riverside County, as the Medical Examiner-Coroner, at an annual salary of $275,000. He formally replaced Lakshmanan Sathyavagiswaran, who served 2 years as the Coroner, in August 2013. Mark Fajardo resigned in March 2016. A news report indicated that "he left because it became common to have up to 50 bodies waiting to be processed and the backlog of bodies was 'nuts'. ... and toxicology tests were taking six months to complete" due to inadequate staffing. Fajardo's predecessor, Lakshmanan Sathyavagiswaran, was re-appointed on an interim basis on April 11, 2016.

Jonathan R. Lucas

Jonathan R. Lucas was appointed as the Chief Medical Examiner-Coroner on July 10, 2017. Lucas announced his intent to leave DMEC in September 2022.

Odey C. Ukpo

On November 4, 2022, Odey C. Ukpo, Medical Director of the Department, was sworn in as Interim Chief Medical Examiner-Coroner. Ukpo is the first African American to serve as Chief Medical Examiner-Coroner since the office was established in 1850. Ukpo joined the Department in 2014 and served as a Senior Deputy Medical Examiner before being named Medical Director in June 2022. On March 7, 2023, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors appointed Odey C. Ukpo as Chief Medical Examiner-Coroner.

References

External links

* {{Authority control Boyle Heights, Los Angeles County government agencies in California Government of Los Angeles County, California Medical examiners