New Pima County Medical Examiner facility will be completed by the end of the year

TUCSON, Ariz. (KGUN) – The Pima County Medical Examiner’s Office is operating in a space where current capacity does not meet the needs of a growing population in Southern Arizona.

Now, Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Greg Hess said he is looking forward to moving into the new medical research facility. The new building is located just one block south of the current building and is twice as large.

Dr. Hess said plans for the building anticipated population growth in Pima County and smaller surrounding counties. He added that Southern Arizona also faces an issue unique to our border state, creating a need for additional plans.

“The migrant deaths that we started seeing in Southern Arizona really started in the year 2000. That predated our old facility. So this gives us, as we built this, an opportunity to think about how we can house our unidentified remains in the long term. We are going to do that differently in this building,” says Dr. Hess.

The Pima County Medical Examiner’s Office records data to show the number of deaths determined to be undocumented border crossers. Many unidentified remains, said Dr. Hess, are probably from this group.

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Construction of the building was completed earlier this month and final inspections are underway. Dr. Hess expects to move into the new facility before the end of the year.