In a brief telephone interview on Monday, March 1, Deputy Coroner Regina Mancera told The Mountain Enterprise that, though the final coroner’s report has not yet been issued, a cause of death has been determined for the passing of Carl ‘Scotty” Shropshire, 49 of Frazier Park.

Mancera said a methamphetamine overdose has been designated as the cause of death. Shropshire’s body was found on November 22, 2009 in his parent’s home by Kern County Sheriff’s Senior Deputy James Newell and a Shropshire family member. Shropshire’s parents, according to family friends, were on a camping trip at the time of their son’s death.

Shropshire died less than three weeks after the body of Jukka Hellsten was found in Cuddy Creek, not far from the Kern County Sheriff’s substation, below Monterey bridge in Frazier Park.

Shropshire was a boyfriend of Alyce Coleman, 42 who filed a missing person’s report on Hellsten 10 days before the Finnish citizen’s body was discovered, November 3. She’d been living with Hellsten for about 10 months at the time of his disappearance.

The coroner’s office has been backlogged with unfinished autopsy reports, coroners explained when asked about the delay in issuing the report.

–P. Hedlund and G. Meyer

This is part of the March 05, 2010 online edition of The Mountain Enterprise.

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