Coroner Neil Sims postponed a scheduled coroner’s inquest today right at the time it was scheduled to start, leaving family members of the deceased outraged and asking more questions than Sims or deputy coroner Sue Williams could answer.
Sims scheduled the inquest at the request of the family of Matthew Roberts, 71, who was found dead in his home on Sept. 26, 2014. Family members discovered Roberts on the floor of his home with a massive head injury. Located near the body was a bolt action rifle, covered by a pair of pants.
Officers from the Coffee County Sheriff’s Office and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation responded and investigated the incident. Officials determined that the rifle was the weapon that resulted in Roberts’s death. Roberts’s body was sent to the state crime lab, where his death was ruled a suicide.
Family members requested the inquest in hopes that the cause of death would be changed from a suicide to accidental. The inquest was scheduled to take place at 3 p.m. in Courtroom A of the courthouse, with a six-person jury and a court reporter present.
However, a few minutes after 3 p.m., Coroner Sims came into the room and announced that the inquest was postponed because several witnesses, including one GBI agent who was on maternity leave and another agent who is now serving in the Marines, couldn’t be at the inquest.
“Without their testimony, I don’t think we can make a proper ruling,” stated Sims.
He did not say when the inquest would be re-scheduled; he did, however, state that the agent on maternity leave would be out until August.
Family members who had been summoned to the inquest, some of whom drove long distances to attend, were very upset with Sims’s decision to postpone the inquest. Several asked Sims some very pointed questions, including when he found out that not all the witnesses would be present.
Deputy Coroner Williams stated that they learned Tuesday that several witnesses wouldn’t be able to attend. When asked why they didn’t notify everyone then, Williams simply stated that she didn’t know how to answer that question.
In the end, Sims apologized for any inconvenience the postponement caused, which did little to settle family members’ emotions. He said he would notify everyone involved when a date for the rescheduled inquest had been selected.