ABSTRACT
Shooting incidents are, unfortunately, a common occurrence in our society. The classic image is Film Noir-ish or gangster-related, the Capone gang spraying bullets inside the SMC Cartage Company garage on Valentine’s Day in 1929 [2] or Eliot Ness’ band of Prohibition Bureau Agents peppering kegs in one of Capone’s breweries, their amber stream of illegal booze flooding the room. Modern society offers a different image, though. The troubled Virginia Tech student who shoots-up a campus classroom killing multiple innocents [3], Vice President Cheney accidentally shoots lawyer Harry Whittington in the face with a shotgun [4], or Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan murders his fellow soldiers at Fort Hood [5]. These may seem like extreme examples, but shooting incidents fill the tabloids with spectacular headlines almost daily. Generally, we classify shooting incidents into one of the following categories:
Suicide• Accidental discharge of a weapon-hunting incidents/stray bullets• Homicide• Drive-by shootings• Terrorist activity• Emotionally disturbed incidents•
Understanding and reconstructing the shooting incidents means identifying, interpreting, and preserving all critical forensic evidence. There are specific scene-dependant activities and considerations necessary to ensure a comprehensive scene investigation and subsequent reconstruction. From a forensic perspective, this means understanding how firearms work and how projectiles interact with targets, the ammunition used and its chemistry, and determining bullet flight paths.
