18-Year Old Girl is New Deputy Coroner

An 18-year old girl in Portland, IN has always dreamed of being a coroner, just like her dad. Amanda Barnett has become Indiana’s youngest certified death investigator and is still a senior in high school! She’s a self-proclaimed CSI “junkie”.

“It’s kind of weird to (my friends),” said Barnett, a “CSI” television show junkie who has attended numerous coroner conventions with her father. “To other people it’s disgusting, but I think it’s interesting and somebody’s got to do it.”

This is no farce or same either, Amanda seems to really know what she’s doing.

She had to get special permission to attend a certification class given by the Indiana State Coroners Training Board because she was only 17 when it started. Barnett also had to pass a 100-question test — on which she scored a 97 percent — submit four case reports and attend an autopsy.

When I was growing-up, my dad was a deputy coroner in a little, small town in Kentucky. I’d helped him pick up some dead bodies from morgues and stuff, but I never got the inclination to pursue that as a career. But, as Amanda said in the news story, “somebody’s got to do it.”

Congratulations Amanda and we wish you the best of luck.