Authorities have identified two people whose remains were found in the Florida Keys back in 2014 and after Hurricane Irma in 2017, officials said.<\/p>\n
Advances in DNA methods helped investigators identify both people years after their bodies were found, Monroe County Sheriff’s Office officials said Thursday.<\/p>\n
The remains found on April 9, 2014, at the Breezy Pines RV Estates on Big Pine Key were identified as 52-year-old Igor Kolomiets, officials said.<\/p>\n
An autopsy found Kolomiets’ cause and manner of death to be undetermined.<\/p>\n
Officials said inconsistencies in immigration records among people with the same name were found, making it difficult to identify the remains.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, the remains found on Sept. 14, 2017, in the aftermath of Hurricane Irma on Big Pine Key have been confirmed as 77-year-old James Donald Schlake, of Key Largo, the sheriff’s office said.<\/p>\n
The medical examiner had determined Schlake’s cause of death to be drowning and ruled the manner of death accidental, but investigators were unable to identify him at the time due to decomposition.<\/p>\n
But last month, after potential genetic relatives were identified, investigators confirmed the remains as those of Schlake.<\/p>\n
The sheriff’s office worked with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to make the identifications.<\/p>\n
“I want to thank the hard work by the men and women of the Sheriff\u2019s Office and the FDLE for providing closure to the families in these two cases,” Monroe Sheriff Rick Ramsay said in a statement. “Even when cases go cold, we remain committed to providing justice and solace to those affected.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Authorities have identified two people whose remains were found in the Florida Keys back in 2014 and after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":128374,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,2472,29,5696],"class_list":{"0":"post-128373","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-florida","8":"tag-florida","9":"tag-florida-headlines","10":"tag-florida-keys","11":"tag-florida-news","12":"tag-monroe-county"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128373","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=128373"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128373\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/128374"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=128373"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=128373"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=128373"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}