An employee at the Connecticut medical examiner’s office has been put on paid leave for allowing her husband to view the body of Sandy Hook killer Adam Lanza two days after the elementary school massacre.
Jean Henry, a processing technician in the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, took her husband into the room where bodies are kept pending autopsies on the morning of the day Lanza’s post-mortem was to be performed, reports the
Hartford Courant.
She unzipped the bag so her husband, who does not work in the examiner's office, could look at Lanza’s body, sources told the newspaper.
Lanza, who shot 20 first-grade and kindergarten students, as well as six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, shot himself in the head as police arrived. Before going to the school, he also killed his mother.
After Chief State Medical Examiner H. Wayne Carver II learned of the viewing incident, he placed Henry on leave and filed an internal complaint to begin an investigation.
Normally, only authorized personnel are allowed access to the room where bodies are stored. Usually that means doctors and assistants conducting autopsies or law enforcement officials investigating a case, the Courant reported.
Henry was assigned to the medical examiner’s office in early 2011, after working 14 years in the governor’s budget office during the administrations of Republican Govs. John G. Roland and M. Jodi Rell. The reassignment cut her pay of more than $100,000 to $55,910, according to the Courant.
The newspaper also reported that a lawsuit she filed against Democratic Gov. Dannel P. Malloy attempting to be reinstated in her old position is still pending. The lawsuit claims she was reassigned because she was a Republican.
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