{"id":405123,"date":"2026-07-20T10:41:19","date_gmt":"2026-07-20T10:41:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/405123\/"},"modified":"2026-07-20T10:41:19","modified_gmt":"2026-07-20T10:41:19","slug":"inside-the-work-of-los-angeles-countys-chief-medical-examiner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/405123\/","title":{"rendered":"Inside the work of Los Angeles County’s chief medical examiner"},"content":{"rendered":"

LOS ANGELES (AP) \u2014 The Los Angeles County Medical Examiner\u2019s Office has performed autopsies in many high-profile cases, including that of 14-year-old Celeste Rivas Hernandez<\/a>, who singer D4vd<\/a> is charged with killing, and the death of \u201cFriends\u201d star Matthew Perry<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Odey Ukpo talked to The Associated Press<\/a> about how his office handles its work and reaches its headline-making conclusions.<\/p>\n

Why the cause of death is not always the most obvious option<\/p>\n

Perry was found unresponsive in the hot tub at his Los Angeles home in October 2023 and initial reports speculated that he had drowned. <\/p>\n

Two months after his death, Ukpo\u2019s office determined the main cause of his death was acute toxicity of the surgical anesthetic ketamine<\/a> and that drowning was a secondary cause. <\/p>\n

Some advocates for ketamine, which is increasingly used to treat depression and chronic pain, said drowning should have been deemed the primary cause.<\/p>\n

Ukpo said his staffers considered how anyone could drown in a hot tub and concluded Perry would have been able to climb out safely if he hadn\u2019t been incapacitated by the drug.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut for the ketamine, would he have been out of it and unable to rescue himself?\u201d Ukpo said. \u201cThat\u2019s why ketamine is the cause of death primarily, and then the drowning contributed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Why \u2018overdose\u2019 never appears in an autopsy report<\/p>\n

\u201cA medical examiner never certifies a death as an overdose. If you look at death certificates, you\u2019ll never see \u2018methamphetamine overdose.\u2019\u201d Ukpo said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s just part of the culture and understanding about how drugs kill people. People can understand \u2018overdose,\u2019 but any level of methamphetamine can kill somebody. When you say overdose, it suggests that there\u2019s an appropriate amount that someone can take. This one overdid it,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s never the message that we give.\u201d<\/p>\n

Why toxicology reports take so long <\/p>\n

Autopsies are generally performed and initial conclusions reached soon after a body is found, but a report revealing cause of death can take months if a toxicology test is required. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe want to make sure that we get it right,\u201d Ukpo said. \u201cWhen someone dies, the blood specimens are different than when you\u2019re at the hospital, so they\u2019re harder to handle. And we also have to have certainty. In the hospital if you do a urine drug test, they tell you within a few hours. And that\u2019s because they\u2019re OK if it\u2019s wrong. They\u2019ll treat you because the treatment for cocaine, it doesn\u2019t hurt. We\u2019ll just assume it\u2019s cocaine and that\u2019s fine. But for us, it\u2019s cause of death and has implications. And so it does take months to come back.\u201d <\/p>\n

In some cases, toxicology tests are needed to understand what substance may have killed the person. In others, they\u2019re more of a check to assure conclusions are correct. <\/p>\n

When the autopsy was performed on Rivas Hernandez<\/a>, who had been dead for months when her body was found, it was fairly clear she had been stabbed. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe knew very early on what was going on, particularly defects in the clothing and on the body itself,\u201d Ukpo said. \u201cIt\u2019s then we have to do toxicology as due diligence to make sure drugs didn\u2019t also play a role in the death.\u201d<\/p>\n

Alcohol was found in her system, but it was produced postmortem. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhen someone dies, the bacteria can then change the glucose into alcohol. And so therefore you have a presence of alcohol, which would appear that it was real, but it was actually produced by a bacteria,\u201d he said. \u201cThere are also other interference things that can make things look like they\u2019re positive at the beginning, but then at the later stage are negative. We do confirmation testing.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LOS ANGELES (AP) \u2014 The Los Angeles County Medical Examiner\u2019s Office has performed autopsies in many high-profile cases,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":405124,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[329,7,2793,34552,967,18,1570,48,52,51,47,50,49,46037,5444,17],"class_list":["post-405123","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-arts-and-entertainment","tag-california","tag-domestic-news","tag-drownings","tag-entertainment","tag-general-news","tag-health","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-matthew-perry","tag-medication","tag-u-s-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405123","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=405123"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405123\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/405124"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=405123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=405123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=405123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}