Worker Disciplined for Letting Husband View Lanza’s Body - East Idaho News
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Worker Disciplined for Letting Husband View Lanza’s Body

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158524809?  SQUARESPACE CACHEVERSION=1357234164086DON EMMERT/AFP/Getty Images(NEW YORK) — An employee at Connecticut’s Office of the Chief Medical Examiner has been placed on paid leave for allowing her husband to peek at the body of Sandy Hook school shooter Adam Lanza, officials told ABC News on Thursday.

Jean Henry, an administrative worker in the medical examiner’s office, let her husband into the refrigerated room in the secure facility in Farmington, Conn., on Dec. 16 to view Lanza’s body, officials said.  Her husband does not work for the medical examiner.

Henry and her husband viewed the body on the gurney, and Henry even unzipped the bag so her husband could view the corpse. Once Chief Medical Examiner H. Wayne Carver learned of the incident, Henry was put on leave on Dec. 20. The incident was first reported by the Hartford Courant.

The spokesperson for the medical examiner told ABC News the matter is under investigation, but they do not know how long it will take.

Lanza, 20, killed himself after he shot his mother and then slaughtered 20 first graders and six school staffers at the Sandy Hook Elementary School on Dec. 14 in one of the worst school shootings in American history.

In an unrelated issue, Henry has a lawsuit pending in the federal court for the district of Connecticut against Gov. Dannel P. Malloy and two aides, a spokeswoman for the state Attorney General’s office confirmed. Henry began working at the medical examiner’s office last year, but previously she worked for 14 years in the governor’s Office of Policy and Management under two Republican governors, John Rowland and Jodi Rell. Malloy is a Democrat.

In her suit against Malloy, Henry alleges she was fired from her higher paying job at OPM and moved to the medical examiner’s office because of political reasons since she was hired under a Republican administration. Discovery in the case closed last Monday and because the lawsuit is pending the Attorney General’s office declined further comment.

Henry’s attorney Andrew Bowman did not immediately return a call for comment.

Adam Lanza’s body was recently claimed from the medical examiner by his father Peter Lanza, according to a family spokesperson, although the body’s whereabouts remain unknown. The funeral home wanted to remain anonymous, but geneticists at the University of Connecticut have agreed to a request from the medical examiner to study his DNA in what seems to be a first of its kind study.

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