As he prepared for the horrible, heart-wrenching task of documenting the 50 deaths from the Pulse massacre, acting medical examiner Joshua Stephany made a decision that resonated nationwide.
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He insisted that the shooter be separated from his victims.
The body of Omar Mateen was transported from the scene alone, stored in a different building than his 49 victims and autopsied separately, too.
“I never wanted anyone to think of that individual in the same place ever again with those whose lives he took,” Stephany said in a recent Sentinel interview.
Stephany and a team of forensic investigators were summoned shortly after 2 a.m. June 12, 2016, to the crime scene they will never forget.
Bodies were everywhere inside Pulse, where the nightclub’s strobe lights were still flashing.
Stephany, hired as an associate medical examiner for Orange and Osceola counties in 2007, had been serving as the acting chief for about a year. He stepped in for Dr. Jan Garavaglia, better known to reality TV audiences as the star of Discovery Channel’s “Dr. G: Medical Examiner,” who had retired.
Orange County commissioners removed Stephany’s interim label two days after Pulse as he was finishing the last of the autopsies.
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The medical examiner’s role, spelled out in Florida statute, requires the dead be identified, injuries and wounds be documented and cause and manner of death be determined. It typically draws little notice — but Pulse was different, and Stephany’s decision-making distinguished it further.
“Special thanks for separating the evil one from the innocents,” wrote Constance O’Hanlon of Oviedo in a letter to the Medical Examiner’s office in the summer of 2016.
It was one of dozens of hand-written notes of praise, prayers and thanks to Stephany and his staff for their compassionate, professional and respectful work. Some writers recognized the team’s inconceivably heavy burden over a few short days.
The staff usually works five to seven cases a day.
But in addition to the usual work and Pulse, Stephany’s team in the same time frame also performed an autopsy of Grimmie, 22, the singer who was shot to death June 10, 2016, by an obsessed fan during a post-concert meet-and-greet. Then, two days after Pulse, they handled the death of a Nebraska toddler, killed by an alligator that snatched him from the beach of Disney’s Grand Floridian Resort.
Some letters urged Stephany and his staff to take care of themselves, too.
“You are leading the way for so many who mourn,” a physician from Washington, D.C., wrote. “My sincerest condolences to all of you — for we, as providers, never go untouched by the ills of the world around us. We give what we can — time, energy, careful thought and above all compassion.”
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