Robert J. Horchuck
August 11, 1950 –
May 28, 2023
Sergeant Robert Joseph Horchuck began his career in 1986 as a Philadelphia Prison System correctional officer. Eventually promoted to sergeant, he held the title of special assistant to two prison commissioners, served as commander of the PPS Special Investigation Unit and was appointed as the first official death investigator liaison between the PPS and the City of Philadelphia Medical Examiner's Office.
Sergeant Horchuck was a certified state police investigator and a graduate of the John E. Reid School of Interviewing and Interrogation. He holds a medical death investigation certificate from the National Criminal Justice Agency Training Council. He received certifications as a medicolegal death investigator, an advanced death investigator, and a special certification as an advanced death investigation on decompositions sponsored by the Division of Forensic and Environmental Pathology at the Saint Louis University School of Medicine in Missouri.
He authored a course on inmate death investigations certified by both the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections and the Philadelphia Medical Examiner's Office. Since 1999, he taught this course at the Prisons Training Academy to over two thousand correctional officers, supervisors, executive and administrative staff. His course was also well received by more than one thousand attendees at six local area colleges and universities.
During his career, Sergeant Horchuck completed over two-hundred ninety inmate death investigations for the PPS and two hundred death investigations for the Philadelphia Medical Examiner's Office. His special investigations unit completed more than fifteen hundred investigations for the PPS Commissioner's Office.
Before his retirement in 2007, he co-authored the official PPS death investigation manual utilized by all investigation units of the Prison System.
Memorial services will be held 12:00pm, Saturday June 3rd, 2023, at Torbert Funeral Chapel, 1145 E. Lebanon Road, Dover, Delaware. Friends may visit one hour prior.
In lieu of flowers, the family suggests contributions be made to Wounded Warrior Project.
To send letters of condolence, and sign guestbook, please visit www.torbertfuneral.com