It's a first of its kind event in the state.

Missing in Nevada Day takes place on February 1 at the Clark County Government Center.

The Clark County Coroner's Office is hosting the event, which hopes to reconnect the public with missing loved ones.

And here to explain how this event will work is Clark County Coroner, Melanie Rouse.

Melanie, thank you for joining Nevada Week.

-Thank you for having me.

-Okay.

So 300, more than 300 unidentified people in Nevada.

Can you give our viewers some perspective on how big of a number that is?

(Melanie Rouse) So 300 dating back to the 1960s and forward, as recent cases, even as recently as the last year, we have unidentifieds.

I would say it's pretty much on par with other large areas and large jurisdictional areas.

We have about 40,000 across the country.

-Wow.

I think that our viewers may wonder, 300 people, where are all of these bodies being kept?

-So after we have done our due diligence in collecting as much information as possible on these decedents and making sure we have built the best profile possible to make identifications on them, they do get transferred to a funeral home for disposition in a, in burial.

-I think you had mentioned that funeral homes rotate this responsibility.

How is it viewed?

-So there is a rotation service through social services that provides burials for unidentified decedents.

-Wow.

Okay.

What will happen at this Missing in Nevada Day that could lead to someone being identified?

-So we are hoping that people will come forward and either report their missing loved one or provide additional information on their missing loved one.

So to make an identification, you have to have information to compare to from when the person was alive to after the person passed.

By connecting those pieces, you can identify people.

The hopes is also to reconnect people and reunify them with people that may still be living.

-Can you give me an example of that, connecting something from when they've passed to something when they were alive?

-So it is really comparing things.

It could be things as simple as records or documents, medical records, X-rays, it could be dental records and X-rays, or it could be DNA compared to a living person that is part of their family lineage.

-So then, what do you want people to bring?

-We would like them to bring anything that could help with identification, whether that's dental records, specifically X-rays, any radiographs from when the person was alive and medical records and documents, any photos of identifying features such as tattoos or marks or scars.

-Any idea of how many people may show up?

-Well, we have monitored similar events in other jurisdictions, very similar to ours, and they had about 100 attendees.

-Is that how this event came to be, you saw it happening elsewhere?

-We did.

You know, this has been a long project in the making, and we've been hopeful to get this off the ground in hopes to get people a comforting place in a good environment to come to where they feel safe and welcomed to provide that information.

-That is something that you stress in the press release, the importance of providing a nonconfrontational environment.

Is that typically what someone would face when they're going to report a missing person?

-I think sometimes there's a fear of reporting their missing loved one.

I think sometimes people are nervous or scared or they may not want to approach law enforcement or they may be afraid of some actions that their own loved one may have been involved in.

And so I think there's an unease there.

So the idea behind Missing in Nevada Day is to provide them a safe and secure location where not only they can come report information, but they can also get resources that they may need as well.

-Like what?

-Like grief support resources or resources on things available to them in the community that they can utilize to help connect them to their loved one.

-All right.

Your office has provided us some slides of unidentified people.

Will those be on display at this event?

-Yes.

We actually printed those out into posters to be on display, in hopes that someone that may attend the event may recognize something, whether it's personal belongings or property or a composite sketch or drawing of the individual.

-Some of those posters, I noticed, even include molds of people's faces and heads.

Why are there some that have that and others that don't?

-It depends on the quality of the remains and our ability to complete those things.

-Okay.

Of those cases, those posters, do you want to talk about a couple or a few that stand out to you?

-I think there's several, and they're all of equal importance to us.

I think anybody that we can make an identification to and return that final piece of who they were is important.

There is things like jewelry.

There's pictures of shoes and clothing and things that belong to them, and the hope is that someone may recognize those items.

-Yeah, and then perhaps get to take that with them and have that as a memory of that person and bring some closure, as you mentioned.

So 200 missing people in Nevada, your press release mentions the 300 unidentified people and then 200 missing people in Nevada, according to a national registry.

Will this event help those people?

Because they are already reported missing.

I mean, haven't you already ran that information against what you have?

So the 200 is, again, like you said, it's the reported missing.

So those are ones that actually people have come forward and reported their missing loved one.

I think this event could absolutely still help them.

The hopes is that they'll bring forward additional information they may not have previously provided that can help us make those connections.

-How would that work?

What would that look like?

-So again, I think when they report a missing person, they may not, in that moment, provide additional details like who their dentist was or where they were last known to be alive or what property or belongings they may have had at the time they went missing.

I think anything that they can bring forward with that additional information would be helpful.

-You took this role in summer of 2021?

So you've been in this position about 3 1/2 years now.

Prior to this, you spent 15 years in the same field in Arizona.

I'm wondering, the large presence of tourists in Las Vegas and in Nevada, has that impacted your ability to identify people, your work in this area?

-So I would say our jurisdiction is unique, because we do have 45 million visitors that come through and travel to Las Vegas every single year.

Of those people, there are some that unfortunately do pass here.

So about 1,000 of our cases every single year come from non-Nevada residents, and amongst those, there are some unidentifieds that we are not able to make IDs.

It does increase the challenges, because making the connections to their families and being able to contact those parties is often difficult.

-If someone is unable to attend this event but sees this afterwards and they think perhaps my missing loved one is in Clark County, what do you suggest they do?

-So we do have an email address that they can submit information to and provide us with details regarding their missing loved one so that we can connect back with them, even if they're not able to attend in person.

-And is that a better method, in your opinion, than doing like the national registry, for example?

-So we do encourage people to still participate in the national registry.

What we are using here is a database to link our unidentifieds to missing persons that are reported right here in our jurisdiction.

-Okay.

I mentioned 3 1/2 years here in Clark County.

When you take a step back and look at the leading causes of death here, what has stood out to you?

-I would say the interesting things that we're seeing lately is the increase in drug-related fatalities.

We have had a significant increase in fentanyl-related fatalities, specifically.

What's interesting is that when we first saw fentanyl come into the, into the drug scene, it was usually in adulterated drugs.

So it was being placed into other drugs, and it was like a surprise finding, if you will.

Now what we see is we actually have people that are out seeking fentanyl as their drug of choice.

-Why do you think that is?

-It's hard to say.

I mean, the social determinants of health say that there's risk factors that drive people to drug use and make them more susceptible to succumbing to that.

-Okay.

And fentanyl is certainly stronger than some of the drugs they were-- -Fentanyl is a very strong opiate.

-Yeah.

Okay.

So opioids were what we were talking about several years ago.

Now it's fentanyl?

-Yes.

It's part of that drug classification, yes.

-Okay.

The Southern Nevada Health District reported that between 2018 and 2023 fentanyl-involved overdose deaths increased 566% in Clark County.

The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health said in that same time period an increase of 649%.

That report, though, from LA County says that: The increase rate slowed significantly in 2023 with only a 3% increase.

The slowdown in the annual increase of fentanyl overdose deaths suggests that fentanyl overdose and poisoning deaths may be nearing a plateau in LA County.

Do you think the same for Clark County?

-See, that is the hope.

But I can tell you just looking at our numbers from 2023 to 2024 we've already seen a 5% increase.

I anticipate that that will actually total out at about 9 1/2% once we finalize closing out of our cases from 2024.

-Okay.

Let's move on to heat-related deaths.

You told me prior to this, prior to us taping this, that there were more than 500 heat-related deaths in Southern Nevada in 2024.

In 2023 the Southern Nevada Health District reported 294 heat-related deaths, so a 78% increase.

What's going on?

-So that is heat related or heat attributed.

So I think that's also you cannot talk about heat-related deaths without talking about drug-related deaths.

So as drug-related fatalities increase, so do your heat-related fatalities.

So there are drugs that actually cause your body to not be able to thermoregulate, making you more susceptible to succumb to heat illness.

That being said, I think also the increases of reflection of we're doing a better job of classifying those deaths.

We implemented a standard process in 2021 so that the classification of heat-related fatalities would be easily abstracted so that we could get good data surrounding these deaths so we could see what was happening in our community.

-When there is a heat-related death where drugs are involved, which category do you end up recording it in?

-It gets classified in both.

-Oh, okay.

So there's a double number, kind of?

I mean, maybe are we counting one person in each category?

-Yes, they could fall into both categories.

So you could also look at that death as a drug-related fatality as well as a heat-caused or heat-attributed fatality.

-And for the education of our viewers, what are some of those drugs that are contributing to heat-related deaths?

-So we do see a lot of methamphetamine in heat-related fatalities.

-Okay.

Why did you go about making those changes?

Because that was something you implemented when you came on board in 2021.

What was happening prior to that?

-So we just wanted to have a standard terminology that could be easily obtained and given to our public health partners so that we could have really good community information, community involvement, and help with those public intervention pieces.

-Any other changes that you've implemented since coming on board?

-I think just standardizing some of our operations, making sure that we're following industry standards across the country, and just making sure that we're doing things correctly to report out.

-A couple more questions.

COVID-19, what are you seeing in terms of deaths related to COVID?

-So the COVID-19 fatalities have decreased significantly since we first saw COVID hit our community, but we are still seeing it.

Now it's much similar to how we have our flu-attributed deaths every single year.

-And what about suicide numbers?

-So our suicide numbers are increasing, which is, which is likely due to the population increase, but I would not say it's a significant climb compared to what you would see year after year.

-Last question.

Back to the event, Missing in Nevada Day, what's a practical expectation of what will come out of that event?

Have you followed up with other events and seen how many people ended up being identified?

-So we have followed up with some results out of other events.

We have found that some events were successful in not only locating and identifying decedents, but they were also successful in reunifying living parties.

So we're hopeful that any kind of identification that we make we would consider a success.

-Melanie Rouse, Clark County Coroner, thank you for joining Nevada Week.

-Thank you for having me.