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Medical examiner reports 9 suicides so far in 2026; raises testing concerns over synthetic W-18 and highlights therapy dog program
Summary
Winnebago County medical examiner provided an update showing nine confirmed suicides so far this year, noted overdose caseloads and testing delays for a synthetic drug (W-18), and described a therapy dog program and staffing increases to handle rising calls.
The Winnebago County medical examiner told the Judiciary & Public Safety Committee that the office has recorded nine confirmed suicide deaths so far in 2026, compared with 27 confirmed suicides in all of 2025, and that one of 2026’s deaths was a veteran.
Mackenzie Morpinski of the medical examiner’s office said the office also has one confirmed overdose and two pending overdose cases so far in 2026; in 2025 the county recorded 26 confirmed overdose deaths and one pending case. Morpinski said some of last year’s overdose cases involved inmates and that a newly identified synthetic — referred to in the meeting as W-18 — is not detected by the county’s usual forensic lab and must be sent to a national lab for confirmation, which delays toxicology results.
The medical examiner outlined staffing and operational pressures and said the office received authority to fund an interim project position to help while a staff member is on leave. She provided call-volume metrics showing a spike in January incidents that the office expects could push annual workloads above 2025 levels unless trends change. She asked the committee to accept anonymized, compiled data in meeting records and to permit staff to supply quarterly summaries of field calls and outreach events.
Morpinski also described the office’s therapy dog, Bree, which staff and families have found valuable for on-scene calming and community outreach. The county has raised funds and established a reserve at the Oshkosh Community Foundation to support Bree’s work; Morpinski said she would provide tracking of Bree’s appearances, calls and events to help measure community benefit and justify maintaining the program when the dog retires.
Committee members asked whether suicides showed common themes; the medical examiner said she had identified some recurring processing themes but saw no single pattern across the cases and offered to follow up with more detailed, anonymized analysis. Members also asked for clearer breakdowns of veteran status, homelessness and incarcerated individuals in the counts; Morpinski agreed to include those clarifications where they are available and anonymized.
The committee accepted the report and requested that the medical examiner submit anonymized data for the meeting record and consider a short quarterly summary of outreach and deployment activity for programs such as the therapy dog.
