May 6, 2006 By The 3 min read

After interviewing several people who knew Mark A. Labuda extremely well, Dr. Phillip E. Reilly said he decided to change his initial ruling on Labuda’s death from suicide to accidental. Labuda, 46, was found dead in a detached garage at his home Jan. 9. The garage was not ventialited, the doors were closed and Labuda’s truck motor was running, Reilly said.

Based on the fact that Labuda was under extreme stress during that period of his life and because an autopsy showed Labuda suffered from no lethal injuries, Reilly said he ruled the death an apparent suicide from asphyxiation due to carbon monoxide poisoning.

State police said Labuda and his wife, Caroline, reported they had been assaulted in their Route 51 home by Thomas C. Staffen, 29, of Finleyville about six to eight hours before Labuda was found dead.

Staffen was initially charged with two counts of aggravated assault and two counts of simple assault for the alleged assault on Labuda, but the charges have since been reduced to one count of simple assault.

Four others were charged for allegedly interfering with police who showed up to investigate the assault. Charges against two of the people were dropped earlier this week.

An autopsy showed Labuda suffered from several injures – fractured facial bones, two fractured rights ribs and several scrapes and bruises – but that none of them were life threatening.

“It looked like suicide,” Reilly said.

However, after interviewing family members, neighbors and state police, Reilly said he began to doubt his initial ruling.

“I discovered there were some weaknesses in my analysis,” he said.

Reilly said a neighbor who had known Labuda since grade school told him Labuda regularly went to the garage, which also served as a workshop, to think and be by himself. The neighbor, according to Reilly, said Labuda frequently started the truck in the garage without opening the garage door. Because the garage had recently been insulated, Reilly said it would have held in more of the carbon monoxide fumes than it did in the past.

Labuda could have fallen asleep or went unconscious from the pain of his injuries as a result of the assault, Reilly said, noting that he could not rule out either of those possibilities.

However, Reilly said he does believe Labuda’s death was accidental.

He said several relatives, friends and church members told him they did not believe Labuda was suicidal and that suicide would have gone against Labuda’s religious beliefs.

“They all said, in my opinion, he would not have done this,” Reilly said, referring to comments made by those who knew Labuda.

Reilly said he is much more comfortable with the manner of death in regards to Labuda being accidental instead of suicide.

“I think this is a more accurate ruling than what I said in the first 72 hours following his death,” Reilly said. “I don’t believe he intended to take his own life.”