Student sleuths connect the dots
Published 10:06 pm Friday, June 19, 2015
During the Suffolk Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office fourth forensics camp, students considering a career in crime scene investigation learned it’s not quite the same as on TV.
According to Joan Turner, community outreach coordinator with the office and formerly supervisor of Suffolk Police Department’s forensics unit, 60 students are attending the five-day camp at the Health and Human Services Building on Hall Avenue — five more than last year.
On Thursday, students split into groups to comb and document three “crime scenes” — a robbery, an assault and, down in the parking lot, the recovery of a stolen vehicle.
On the scene of the mock robbery, Turner explained to the students what’s known about what went down.
After working the second shift at Walmart, a woman arrived home at 11:40 p.m. to be confronted by two men demanding her purse and money.
A struggled ensued — the woman thought she scratched one of them, but they snatched her purse.
“Remember, it is not all you see in front of you,” Turner said, speaking of the evidence left behind. “It can be other places as well. You need to look really good.”
Students bustled about performing the tasks they selected or were assigned. Jewel Myrick, a John F. Kennedy Middle School rising eighth-grader, knelt down to snap a photo of an item of clothing.
Myrick said she signed up for the camp “because I’m into the CSI stuff.”
New for the camp this year are six volunteers, either high school students — for those with Suffolk Public Schools, the hours will count toward their 50-hours-of-community-service graduation requirement — or, like Breon Stocks, recent graduates.
“It’s a good way to learn about it,” Stocks said. “I’m going to college to study criminal justice. I want to go to the FBI.”
Criofan Shaw, a rising ninth-grader at King’s Fork High School, plans to become a prosecutor. “It opened my eyes a little bit more to the different fields of criminal justice,” he said of the camp.
In the third-floor room next door, A.W. Hall, a sheriff’s deputy in Isle of Wight County, showed Lakeland High School rising sophomore Dajour Faulk how to collect evidence after the assault.
“It’s pretty fun — it’s interesting,” Faulk said.
In the parking lot outside, students pondered how a stolen SUV might fit into the overall picture. Sophia Welsh, a rising John Yeates Middle School seventh-grader, said the students thought the three crime scenes were connected — which would turn out to be the case.
Evidence scattered in and around the vehicle included bullet casings, fingerprints, two cigarette butts and a glove.
“I’m pretty sure the lab people are going to classify it then share what we found with the other groups,” Sophia said.
“We have a feeling that when the other groups tell their side of the story, ours will become a lot easier.”