The Cambria County Coroner’s Office shall conduct investigations to determine the cause and manner of any death that falls into their jurisdiction and to determine whether or not there is sufficient reason for the Coroner to believe any such death may have resulted from criminal acts or criminal neglect of persons other than the deceased.

The Coroner has jurisdiction in the following eleven (11) circumstances:

1. Sudden deaths not caused by readily recognizable disease, or wherein the cause of death cannot be properly certified by a physician on the basis of prior recent medical attendance.
2. Deaths occurring under suspicious circumstance, including those where alcohol, drugs or other toxic substances may have had a direct bearing on the outcome.
3. Deaths occurring as a result of violence or trauma, whether apparently homicidal, suicidal or accidental (including, but not limited to, those due to mechanical, thermal, chemical, electrical or radiation injury, drowning, cave-ins and subsidence).
4. Any death in which trauma, chemical injury, drug overdose or reaction to drugs or medication or medical treatment was a primary or secondary, direct or indirect, contributory, aggravating or precipitating cause of death.
5. Operative or peri-operative deaths in which the death is not readily explainable on the basis of prior disease.
6. Any death wherein the body is unidentifiable or unclaimed.
7. Deaths known or suspected as due to contagious disease and constituting a public hazard.
8. Deaths occurring in prison or a penal institution or while in the custody of the police.
9. Deaths of persons whose bodies are to be cremated, buried at sea or otherwise disposed of so as to be thereafter unavailable for examination.
10. Sudden infant death syndrome.
11. Stillbirths – As part of the investigation, the Coroner shall determine the identity of the deceased and notify the next of kin of the deceased. Act of Aug. 9, 1955 (PL 323) Section 1237.