By MIKE COURSON
Great Bend Post
Death is never a pleasant topic but it is, in its most basic sense, a part of the natural order. Given that the dead can no longer speak, someone must do the talking for them. Barton County Sheriff Brian Bellendir said that's why law enforcement is called to investigate all unattended deaths.
"Basically, anytime somebody passes away that is not under the care of a physician, or is not attended, we go out and investigate it," he said. "We investigate it until we are satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that it is not a homicide. We have to make sure there was no foul play."
Motor-vehicle accidents, workplace accidents, suicides, and natural deaths in the home are all examples of unattended deaths. Authorities take in visual clues from the scene, eyewitness testimony, and other evidence to determine what may have caused the death. Only a coroner or medical examiner will determine a cause of death.
"The bottom line is, we don't want to let a homicide slip by," Bellendir said. "You don't want to have what you think is a natural death or an unattended death that is actually a homicide. You don't want that to slip past you because that is one of our jobs is we have to speak for the dead. They're gone, so we have to find justice for them."
In decades past, municipal police departments in Kansas were unable to charge suspects with felony offenses, so elected sheriffs or representatives from their offices investigated all unattended deaths in a county in case a felony crime had been committed. While the sheriff's office maintains jurisdiction throughout the entire county, municipal departments handle most unattended death investigations within their respective city limits.