MIDLAND, Texas — Across the street from the courthouse, Midland County now has access to a local morgue thanks to the conversion of a property owned by the county into one.
“County’s owned the property for quite a while… It wasn’t being utilized. There was going to have to be a tremendous amount of money spent on it to make it an office building or something like that. We found out we could utilize it for this. We spent money on it, don’t get me wrong, but not near what we would’ve to make offices and stuff,” said Midland County Judge Terry Johnson.
Before this, all bodies were kept in Ector County’s morgue.
With this new development, local funeral homes will have easier access to the bodies.
The medical field and law enforcement will also greatly benefit from this new morgue.
“Now the hospital only has room, my understanding, room for a couple and after a third one they need someplace to put that body. ,hey’ll be able to put that body here… Our death investigators, the investigators with the Sheriff’s Department or DA, whoever’s investigating, police department, they’ll have access here to get the things and information they need.” Johnson continued.
Johnson also shed some light on what the capacity of the new facility is as well.
“It’ll hold 20 bodies right now. Then we also have a cooler, a segregated cooler that will hold 4. There are times when you may have a contamination of some sort, we never know what. We have racks in there that’ll hold up to 400 pounds,” Johnson added.
As far as possible future improvements to the facility, Johnson says that within a couple years they’ll be able to do their own autopsies in this facility as well.