Forensic Students Simulate Crime Scenes

Dr. Deborah Silva instructs her students during a sketching practical

Last month Dr. Deborah Silva, the chair of the Chemistry Department’s forensic science program, gave a practical for her students on crime scene sketching. President of the Student Members of the American Chemical Society (SMACS) and graduating senior, Ella Pickell, explained that “by diagraming the scene they were learning some very important skills of crime scene investigation. For example, we clock the entry ways of a scene, or paths of travel and locations of where evidence may be discovered. We clearly mark where evidence was found at the scene so that the investigators, lawyers, and jury can visualize the crime scene in the simplest way possible.”

Under the supervision of Dr. Silva, the students used tape measures and graph paper to document where evidence was in relation to key features of the landscape. They worked in groups to measure and record distances, calculate the curvature of the curbs, and determine the proper scale for sketching.