San Diego County supervisors officially opened a new medical examiner's office.
The office, located in Kearny Mesa, is about three times the size of the old facility, and it cost $73 million. Supervisors said the county didn't take on debt because they paid for the new morgue with cash. They said the new building was needed because the old facility was too small to accommodate the growing number of cases. The San Diego county medical examiner's office investigates premature deaths, performing 2,000 autopsies each year.
Diane Jacob, chair of the county board, said, "Because the dead cannot speak for themselves, the medical examiner gives them a voice, so their loved ones have answers."
The new medical examiner's office will be part of a county operations campus, now under construction.
