India bound
UWindsor staff travel to India• page 06
universityofwindsor’s studentnewspaper • oct.26.2011 • vol#84 • issue#09 • uwindsorlance.ca
Researchers happy as a pig in mud
Ground-breaking forensic research to determine distance to target information post-mortem stephen hargreaves NEWS EDITOR ______________________________
W
indsor Police Service and the Centre for Forensic Sciences at the University of Windsor hope nine decomposing pigs will answer some ballistic questions. A ground-breaking study conducted by fourth-year forensic science stu-
dent Nick Cercone and Judy Chin of the Centre for Forensic Sciences asked, “Can you determine how far a gun was from the person who was shot after decomposition?” “We can use certain visual and chemical tests to determine how far a gun was from a victim but we’ve never look at the effect of decomposition,” said Sherah Vanlaerhoven, associate professor in biology and chair of forensic science at the university. “Everyone has just looked at recent shootings, never a situation where decomposition has played a role.”
Police’s training facility on Sandwich Street, was established in mid-August. Nine euthanized pigs, three above ground and six buried, were shot through “cotton test panels.” The first exhumation was conducted early September followed by a second one on Oct. 13. “The study had three objectives,” said Vanlaerhoven. “To deter-
mine the effect of decomposition on our ability to determine how far a gun was away from a person when they were shot, to expand upon the limited information of the effect of insects on buried bodies and to act as a training ground for Windsor police ... When they recover buried bodies, they’ll know the correct techniques.” But why pigs? “The reason we go with pigs,” explained Vanlaerhoven, “is in Canada we don’t have any human ‘body farms’ so we make do with animal models for decomposition.” “A 50-pound (23 kilogram) pig is roughly equivalent to an adult human torso, and because pigs are omnivores they feed on the same types of things and have the same type of gut fauna that we have. That means that their internal decomposition is very similar to ours,” said Vanlaerhoven. “Plus, pigs are raised domestically and are also very accessible because we can get them from farmers.”
The pig body farm, on the grounds of the Windsor
“Pig skin is very similar to ours,” said Cercone. “Pig skin is even used in human skin grafts.”
• photo m.n. malik
The similarity of human skin and that of swine allows researchers to analyze the residue on the cotton pads including the reaction of the skin to the point of the entry wound and the subsequent decomposition. The exhumed swine are undergoing a number of the tests conducted by Cercone in a forensic science lab at the university, including modified griess test that looks for nitrates in residue, a diphenylamine test, which give positive or negative results of the presence of nitrates and a sodium rhodizonate test that identifies lead if found in the residue. “If there is a case where a body has been shot and buried, which is quite common, we will find whether these tests are still applicable and accurate, and we will determine the limitations of these tests,” said Cercone. Results from these tests are being processed this week and Cercone will release his findings in a report to be published by the forensic sciences department later this year.
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