Prowers County Commissioners listen to complaints by Peacock Funeral Home regarding county coroner at recent meeting

During the morning work session of November 12, the Prowers County Commissioners heard updates from staff with the CSU Extension office.  Claudia Terrazas, Spanish Language Specialist, said that she has been busy with both ESL classes in Rocky Ford and Lamar as well as the free beginner Spanish classes for kids in pre-kindergarten through 12^th grade, which she holds in the Lamar Public Library. The classes have been well-attended (with 28 students participating) and the students are enjoying them.  She also teaches citizenship classes and currently has 4 persons participating who are progressing well.  She may be offering basic interpreter classes for kids in the near future.

During the afternoon meeting Cassie Esparza, owner of Peacock Funeral Home in Lamar, was present and wished to speak during the public appearance portion of the meeting.  She wanted to make them aware of what she considers serious problems concerning current Prowers County Coroner Tommy Dunagan.  She began by explaining that she has been employed for over 15 years with Peacock Funeral Home, eventually purchasing the business from Clay Peacock in 2023.  Through the years, Peacock Funeral Home has worked in cooperation with former coroners including Joe Giadone she said, who had a very good and professional working relationship with local funeral homes.  After he passed away in 2019, the county had interim coroners before Mr. Dunagan was hired.  Mr. Dunagan has been vocal throughout his employment regarding his wishes for the coroner’s position to be changed to full time instead of the part time position it has always been in Prowers County.  Ms. Esparza said she didn’t want to downplay that the coroner needs to be available on a 24-hour basis year-round, but noted that funeral homes also have to be available those hours as well.  She said that Dunagan was well aware that the position was part-time as well as knowing what the salary was when he applied for it, referencing his saying he needed to work three jobs to support his family.  She stated that she feels a lack of empathy and his dissatisfaction with the decision made by the commisioners regarding keeping his position part time is affecting his treatment of families of the deceased as well as causing them undue grief.  As an example of this, she referenced an unattended death which Dunagan initially refused to respond to, saying he had already worked his 20 hours that week, causing the family extreme distress.

Ms. Esparza went on to say that she has read several posts on the coroner’s Facebook page, one of which states that the county “has 100 deaths a year” and implies that he has to do death investigations on them all, estimating his time at 15 hours per investigation.   She said that in fact, the coroner only has to investigate unattended deaths.  That number, she said, is much smaller than the 100 he cites.  “Assuming he would somehow be required to do 100 investigations (on all deaths in the county)” she said ,“the numbers would still only amount to a part-time position”,  at approximately 19.7 hours per week.  Ms. Esparza also took issue with another of his Facebook posts, which concerns the vehicle recently donated to the coroner’s office by Prowers County.  In it, Dunagan stated that having the vehicle was an asset to his office, greatly reducing response time by funeral homes. She said he posted that a death in the county “took an extremely long time for the funeral home to respond to” which she said is a lie.  According to her, funeral homes want to be called to death scenes and always have been, saying that funeral home employees should be the first contact the families of the deceased have, as they are the ones to help the family through the process that occurs after a death. She added that many families are familiar with the local funeral home directors and as such, have a preference as to which one to use and trust them to respect both the families and their loved ones but that at times Mr. Dunagan has not called either local funeral home to death scenes.

A recent death needing the coroner’s attention, she said, required a deputy coroner to respond, who was unable to use this vehicle, as it is currently kept at Dunagan’s home in Holly.  She questioned  why the vehicle is kept at his home instead of in a mutually convenient location for all deputies to access. Ms. Esparza noted that responding to death scenes has never been an issue for her funeral home and that the coroner’s office has never had nor needed a vehicle for this purpose, as she or a member of her staff is available 24 hours a day and are willing and able to respond.  She stated that Mr. Dunagan also has told her not to share the timeline of autopsy results with family members of deceased persons, telling her that “it is not your position to do so”.  She said the funeral home has always kept families informed of the autopsy’s progress in respect for the families waiting on results, saving them from having to repeatedly call the funeral homes to ask about same.

After responding to a recent unattended death in Lamar, she claims that Dunagan told the family of the deceased that her funeral home “was full” (it wasn’t she said, saying that she had no pending services at that time) and that he would be taking the body elsewhere.  The family involved has been close to the Peacock family for many, many years, including Clay Peacock, who was also present at this meeting with the commissioners.  Peacock then spoke about this situation, saying he received a phone call from what he described as a “very distraught mother” who was livid about the situation and wanted to know why Peacock Funeral Home didn’t have her son’s body.  He said this resulted in a great deal of distress to the family as well as creating an awkward situation between the two local funeral homes, as the body then had to be transferred to Peacocks.  Ms. Esparza told the commissioners “it is a crime for a coroner to make referrals to a specific funeral home” as well as being unprofessional.   She said she feels as though she is “currently on his bad list” for being outspoken in opposition to him and that he is punishing her with acts like this, adding that “it is professionally unethical to suggest a funeral home is full”.   Peacock said that in the past, Valley Memorial in Lamar was felt to be on this “bad list”.

Despite repeated directives from the commissioners to Dunagan, he continues to use the cooler in the basement of the Annex Building to store bodies awaiting transport to Colorado Springs for autopsies in lieu of calling one of the funeral homes to death scenes for storage at their facilities (autopsies are not performed by the Prowers County Coroner) she said.  The cooler, she stated, was in fact donated to the county by her funeral home with the specific implication that it was to be used only in the event of a mass casualty.  She claims he has consistently justified using it by lying about how funeral homes cannot be involved in the “chain of custody”.  Ms. Esparza said that in fact, funeral homes are involved in this chain of custody, since they are regulated by DORA (which the coroner isn’t) and have to follow stricter rules concerning same than the coroner does.

“Our system has always worked without a hitch” she said, referencing the relationship with previous coroners with no animosity between the funeral homes.  In fact, she said, in the past if a specific funeral home wasn’t requested by the family, the funeral homes “took turns on a monthly basis” receiving bodies.  “Just because this has been done a long time, doesn’t mean it’s not right” she added.

At this point, an audience member spoke up, asking the commissioners what could be done about Dunagan and these practices.  She was told that since he is an elected official and not an employee of the county since they only oversee the budget for his office, a recall would be the only way to remove him from office. Ms.  Esparza thanked the commissioners for listening to her concerns and said “someone needs to stick up for these families and stand up for what is true and what is untrue” regarding Dunagan.

Also present for the afternoon meeting were Lanie Myers-Mireles, Director of Prowers County Department of Human Services and Meagan Hillman, Prowers County Public Health Director. The topic of discussion was any potential county contributions to families affected by the recent government shutdown and delay in SNAP benefits.  When this meeting was originally scheduled, the shutdown was still in effect and although a vote later that day would likely reinstate these benefits, it was felt that the county needed to have a plan in place for any possible future issues such as this.  How to distribute any benefits would need to be decided upon, such as if purchasing gift cards to grocery stores would best serve those affected or if the money would be better spent by purchasing food for local food banks to distribute.  This will be discussed at an upcoming meeting.

By: Barbara Crimond