A high-ranking official with the San Francisco medical expert’s workplace allegedly chucked a human cranium wanted to establish a corpse within the trash — and ousted the well-meaning worker who reported his gaffe.
David Serrano Sewell, the chief director of San Francisco’s Workplace of the Chief Medical Examiner, “inexplicably” trashed the very important proof throughout a rushed clean-up forward of an inspection, axed worker Sonia Kominek-Adachi alleged in a lawsuit filed on Feb. 2.
Kominek-Adachi caught Serrano Sewell’s alleged mistake when she was doing a listing of physique components saved within the workplace in January 2023 and realized an unidentified corpse, labeled “Doe #82,” was lacking its head.
The workplace was legally required to maintain the cranium till they recognized the Doe.
Serrano Sewell was promoted to the workplace’s government director only one month earlier, in response to his LinkedIn.
Information obtained by The San Francisco Commonplace confirmed that the cranium belonged to a person discovered useless in an embankment beside a homeless encampment close to Lake Merced in October 2014.
When the cranium was discarded, it was encased in a clay solid because the workers tried to reconstruct the looks of the person’s face.
Within the case {that a} physique can’t be recognized, or there aren’t any subsequent of kin left to say it, the stays are cremated and scattered on the Golden Gate Bridge.
“The cranium was a vital component within the [office’s] means to establish [the remains]. With out the cranium, additional identification procedures couldn’t be accomplished,” the lawsuit mentioned.
After Kominek-Adachi flagged the disappearance, the pinnacle honcho allegedly “made no effort to provoke an investigation into the whereabouts of the cranium and gave her the chilly shoulder when she pressed additional.
Serrano Sewell allegedly continued to dodge her inquiries and, when she was up for a promotion, he “illegally” directed her to take a polygraph check and subjected her to an intensive background examine, the lawsuit alleged.
In that, the lawsuit purported Serrano Sewell was attempting to retaliate towards Kominek-Adachi by “uncover[ing] all points of her private and personal life.”
When Kominek-Adachi’s promotion was lastly confirmed, the workplace pivoted and positioned her in a brief place, the lawsuit claimed.
Months later, and after Serrano Sewell insisted he’d recovered the long-lost cranium, Kominek-Adachi fell out of her boss’ favor over a client affairs criticism she filed towards a funeral dwelling in Placer County, alleging that it didn’t cremate her grandmother’s stays on a well timed foundation.
The criticism was made individually from her function on the medical expert’s workplace, however the funeral dwelling reached out to her office and asserted the submitting was improper due to her function as a loss of life investigator.
From there, Serrano Sewell allegedly used the debacle “to concoct a cause to terminate” Kominek-Adachi, the lawsuit claimed.
Serrano Sewell fired her whereas she was nonetheless being investigated by the workplace’s human sources division, in response to the lawsuit.
She was first informed her termination was because of price range cuts, however the metropolis later linked it to her having “exerted undue affect” in her disagreement with the funeral dwelling, the lawsuit mentioned.
“She noticed a profession within the medical expert’s workplace, and that profession is over. Her termination is a horrible black mark on her means to proceed to work in her area,” her legal professional, James Urbanic, informed The Commonplace.
The San Francisco Board of Supervisors moved to settle Kominek-Adachi’s $750,000 wrongful termination lawsuit on Tuesday, KQED reported.
The Submit reached out to the San Francisco Metropolis Legal professional’s Workplace for remark.
