The Stark County coroner has located the sister of a popular former Alliance doctor who died last month.
The coroner had put out a call Thursday morning for help from the public after investigators couldn’t track down the family of Dr. Lawrence Rossiter, who died Oct. 9 of natural causes at Mercy Medical Center in Canton.
The coroner’s office has had his body for three weeks, hoping that family members would step forward to claim it.
But Rossiter, 75, never talked about his estranged family, said Rick Walters, a coroner’s investigator, and the coroner couldn’t find any relatives who apparently lived in the Akron area.
Later Thursday, Walters was able to contact a sister using death notices that appeared in the 1990s in the Akron Beacon Journal.
Rossiter formerly worked in the emergency room at Alliance Community Hospital and also had a successful private practice.
Rossiter, however, was convicted of federal income tax crimes in the 1990s and lost his medical license in 2004. He lost all his money and died indigent, Walters said.
Rick Armon can be reached at 330-996-3569 or rarmon@thebeaconjournal.com.
