822 deaths reported to coroner’s office in 2025
Published 1:30 am Tuesday, January 20, 2026
Grays Harbor County Coroner George Kelley submitted his office’s monthly report for December 2025 to the Board of County Commissioners, which detailed the number of deaths reported for the year and their causes.
As of Dec. 31, there were 822 deaths reported to the Coroner’s Office for all of 2025.
According to the report, 74 deaths were reported in December, which is more than December 2024 (62), and less than December 2023 (79) and 2022 (92), and more than December 2021 (70). Sixty-four deaths were reported as natural causes, including cardiac issues, cancers, infections, gastrointestinal diseases, and pulmonary issues.
There were four suicides for the month of December — two by firearms and two by hanging. Suicides for the year totaled 24, however two additional may also have been suicides and are still under investigation. This far surpasses the last two years, which were 12 for 2023 and 12 for 2024. In 2021 there were 19 and in 2022 18 people died by suicide.
Coroner’s Office investigators conducted 27 on-scene investigations in December, with 259 for the year. Ten post-mortem examinations were conducted in December, and 64 total in 2025.
Grays Harbor County ranks in the Top 3 behind Mason County and Spokane County in the state of Washington for overdose deaths from Nov. 1, 2024 to Nov. 30, 2025, with 54.3 overdose deaths per 100,000. Fentanyl and methamphetamine are still the leading drugs of abuse.
Recently, the Grays Harbor County Coroner’s Office and the King County Medical Examiner teamed up with Othram to identify remains in doubt since 1995 and 2006, respectively.
After 30 years, the remains of a man found on a beach in Ocean Shores were identified as Bruce Joel Andrews, born in 1948, and after 20 years, the remains of a man found in Taholah were identified as Edwin Asher, born in 1934. These cases represent the 43rd and 44th in the state of Washington where officials have publicly identified an individual using technology developed by Othram.
