Burleigh County has been without a county coroner for almost a week, the sheriff's department says.

Burleigh County Sheriff's Major Nick Sevart said Dr. Kelly Supple resigned last week as the Burleigh County coroner and the doctor for the Burleigh County Detention Center.

Burleigh County Auditor Kevin Glatt said Supple brought in her resignation last Tuesday, and her last day of work was Wednesday.

Sevart said Supple's resignation means the sheriff's department is charged with going to the scenes of unattended deaths in Bismarck and Burleigh County and determining causes of death. No unattended death calls came in over the weekend, Sevart said.

He said sheriff's officers and deputies who go to unattended death scenes consult with the deceased person's doctor to determine if a death has natural causes and to look for anything suspicious. If a person with terminal cancer dies, the person's doctor usually will sign a death certificate, Sevart said.

Officers go through a checklist and try to determine if foul play was involved, Sevart said. If a death appears suspicious, they can order an autopsy, he said.

Sevart said some causes of death, such as poisonings, may not be obvious to the officers.

"We're not trained medically," he said.

If an autopsy is needed, the coroner, or sheriff's department, would contact the state medical examiner. North Dakota does not have a medical examiner at this time and has a contract with the University of North Dakota for a pathologist to perform autopsies, said Craig Lahren, the administrator for the forensic examiner's division of the state health department.

Dr. William Massello III, of Roanoke, Va., has been hired as the new state medical examiner, Lahren said.

"The position has been offered and accepted, and he will take office in July," he said.

The absence of a doctor who can respond to detention center problems also opens a challenge for the sheriff's department, Sevart said. Nurses can treat some problems that inmates may have, but some problems require more care, he said.

"If it's beyond (the nurses') training … we've been taking them over to the emergency room," Sevart said.

He said correctional officers or deputies have to accompany the inmates, which means an officer is taken away from normal duty for a couple hours or the sheriff's department has to call someone in to work overtime.

Taking inmates outside the correctional center also poses a risk to the community, because inmates may find an opportunity to escape, Sevart said.

(Reach reporter Jenny Michael at 250-8225 or jenny.michael@;bismarcktribune.com.)