Work is getting strange

[oldman45]

I have been doing accident & crime scene reconstruction for over 30 yrs and court qualified as expert in all levels of court and in several states.

Within the last three months I have had more unexplainable assignments than in the last 30 yrs.

1. Vehicle was sideswiped on interstate. Have one person in a permanant coma and another paralyzed from the neck down. Vehicle damage is all soft metal cosmetic dents. No frame damage and no barrier impact that would allow sudden stoppage. How did their injuries happen?

2. Had a guy shot at less than three feet with 12 ga shotgun. Impact was to left side just below the heart with 00 buckshot. He was out of the hospital in a week. Should have been dead but lived.

3. Had a man shot with a .357 mag at the right eye socket. Bullet exited the head at the right ear. Blind in one eye and deaf in the right ear. Should have been dead but lived.

4. Man had a minor fender bender in a parking lot with airbag deployment and he was killed.

5. Lady is hit headon with a full size vehicle and she was in a full size auto. Motor of her car went into the firewall. She has virtually no injury. Yet the spare tire in the trunk broke the mounting bolts. She should be dead but is fine.

Now I have to go to court on each of these cases and not able to explain anything other than how the incidents took place.

Granted I am not an expert in medical conditions but I am expected to say what type injuries would be expected in such incidents and then let the medical experts explain their medical issues after my testimony.

I want this year to bring back the simple to explain incidents so I do not have to lay awake at night wondering what happened.

 

[26Ford]

I just want to say sir, GOD bless you for what you do. We often forget about people like yourself who have to do what you do for all of us. Of course we alway's pray for the victims of these trajic accidents, but some of us, myself is one, never forget what people like you do. I have a good friend a Sheriff Deputy and a E.M.T., the horror stories he sometimes has to share with someone just to vent for his own sanity, I can't repeat. 26

 

[venomballistics]

I have been doing accident & crime scene reconstruction for over 30 yrs and court qualified as expert in all levels of court and in several states.

Within the last three months I have had more unexplainable assignments than in the last 30 yrs.

1. Vehicle was sideswiped on interstate. Have one person in a permanant coma and another paralyzed from the neck down. Vehicle damage is all soft metal cosmetic dents. No frame damage and no barrier impact that would allow sudden stoppage. How did their injuries happen?

2. Had a guy shot at less than three feet with 12 ga shotgun. Impact was to left side just below the heart with 00 buckshot. He was out of the hospital in a week. Should have been dead but lived.

3. Had a man shot with a .357 mag at the right eye socket. Bullet exited the head at the right ear. Blind in one eye and deaf in the right ear. Should have been dead but lived.

4. Man had a minor fender bender in a parking lot with airbag deployment and he was killed.

5. Lady is hit headon with a full size vehicle and she was in a full size auto. Motor of her car went into the firewall. She has virtually no injury. Yet the spare tire in the trunk broke the mounting bolts. She should be dead but is fine.

Now I have to go to court on each of these cases and not able to explain anything other than how the incidents took place.

Granted I am not an expert in medical conditions but I am expected to say what type injuries would be expected in such incidents and then let the medical experts explain their medical issues after my testimony.

I want this year to bring back the simple to explain incidents so I do not have to lay awake at night wondering what happened.

Im betting slot 1 was female drivers with airbag deployments. They tend to run with the airbag within kissing distance due to geometry which translates to them really getting socked when they deploy

 

[Rugskipper]

Divine intervention?

 

[JcMack]

I'm expecting to see fatal accidents while texting. Holding the gadget in front of the steering wheel while driving, accident occurs, airbags deploy, pushing the gadget while in your hand at lighting speed to your nose, and cartilage into your brain. Poor sentence construction.

No. 1. Women must face each other while talking. If bags deployed with both in front seat, facing each other, it ain't good. "It ain't good" comes from pg. 467 of my medical manual.

 

[walnutred]

I hope your not trying to start an "Are 12 gauge and 357 enough for self defense?" thread. That 380 thread is showing signs of Zombie-ism.

 

[bitstream]

I used to work in aircraft life support engineering and worked with the life sciences lab on investigating aircraft accidents (fatal). All of these incidents can be explained, but not necessarily obviously.

1) Need more info, pics, diagrams, etc. Lots of possibilities.
2) Golden Bullet. The path of the fragments just happened to miss the vital parts. Statistically improbable, but not impossible.
3) See #2 above
4) Airbags are known to kill if occupant is not positioned "naturally". If he was leaned over to pick up a dropped cell phone, for example, then the bag would drive his head, killing him instantly. As far as the "minor" aspect, airbags read inputs from a number of sensors and then try to run an algorithm of exceptional complexity to determine when to deploy the bag. It's not hard to imagine that the minor impact happened to send just the right impulse to the sensors to trigger the algorithm and, hence, the bags to deploy. You have no idea how much "magic" goes into writing the code for an airbag sensor.
5) The load path from the firewall would go right through the frame to the mounting area where the spare is bolted on. The mounts would have "felt" nearly the whole impulse, thus they broke. The lady, however, is separated from the load path as she is not attached to the car frame, but rather seated. The seat, belts, and bags are designed to attenuate the collision forces, thus allowing survival. She should only be dead if the engineers failed in their work. I've pulled a young girl out of an Explorer that she rolled (multiple times) after striking a curb, the entire vehicle was crushed and sitting on it's roof. The area around the driver's seat wasn't affected. She was ok (other than upset about having to tell her Mom about it). Modern cars are built to give up their bodies to save the occupants.

 

[kraigwy]

I use to do what you d0, I've seen some wierd stuff. One lady shot in the stomach with a 22 died after walking to the ER. Guy shot himself in the chest with a 44 Mag, taken to the hospital only to walk out the next day. Seen a guy shot in the chest with a 12 ga. 00 Buckshot at close range (4 ft). He died but none of the pellets penitrated completly. You could count them on the underside of the skin in his back.

One thing I learned that you can take to the bank, is you never know what a bullet will do, and no two exact bullets will react the same way when they hit a animal/human type target.

I'm with you, accident reconstruction is fun but I left the injuries to doctors, always refused to "guess" what caused what injury.

 

[Len]

Simple truth after thirty years in health care, EMS, transplant, ER....
You just never know! I've seen a lot of the types of accidents and crimes you mention, and can't for the life of me figure out why the result went the surprising way it went.

Saw one guy survive s 308 to the left upper chest, and another that died bumping his head on a bird cage!

You just never know why...you can only reason what might or should happen in the majority of cases....

Len

 

[oldman45]

I just want to say sir, GOD bless you for what you do. We often forget about people like yourself who have to do what you do for all of us. Of course we alway's pray for the victims of these trajic accidents, but some of us, myself is one, never forget what people like you do. I have a good friend a Sheriff Deputy and a E.M.T., the horror stories he sometimes has to share with someone just to vent for his own sanity, I can't repeat. 26

Thank you Sir for the kind words and the thoughts.

In my case it is maybe a little worse than your friend.

I spend hours daily driving from scene to scene alone. Once at a scene, I have to do my work and seldom have time to talk with others there. If I do talk with someone, it is usually at a hospital (more driving) and then it may be they are not able to say too much or as many have, they die while talking to me. I everything down, make detailed photos and then come to my office where I put figures together and try to make sense of the events. I may work 12 hrs or more some days and never say a thing to anyone until I get home. The stress level is such I tend to not discuss the work with family members. I sit at my desk and write reports (last night it was 21 typed pages at 2am) and I run off prints of photos I made (91 yesterday). Again, all by myself.

When I do talk about cases, it is usually to some attorney, be it state or civil, and then the next time I talk about it is in court that either puts someone in jail or costs someone in a civil suit.

Two years ago, I had a Mustang hit the rear of a Cavalier and killed a lady in the back of the Cavalier, which was knocked 30 feet forward. The Mustang went backward over 400 feet and was hung up on a fire hydrant. Putting the numbers together did not make sense. The Mustang had too much reverse motion and the Cavalier did not have enough. I laid away at night wondering what I missed. Maybe the point of impact was wrong, maybe another vehicle involved or any number of suppositions. Finally a month later it hit me during the night. The Mustang driver put the car in reverse to flee the scene but then it was why? Was she in shock? Scared? I asked for troopers to meet me at the salvage yard the next day with a drug dog. Found 16 kilos of packaged white powder in the door panels. Naturally she was so charged and it was learned by others she was paid to transport the stuff.

It is a lonely life. I have no one to talk about trips, families or such with other than my own family and they know about trips and family. I sold my diesel pusher motorhome because it was never used. My entire working life is centered around investigations, court rooms and worry about what I may have missed or forgotten to put down on paper. Then I worry about what I may have put down wrong such as a BAC being 2.4 instead of .24 or some other typo. Everything has to be exactly perfect or it can cause problems later for others as well as myself.

 

[oldman45]

Im betting slot 1 was female drivers with airbag deployments. They tend to run with the airbag within kissing distance due to geometry which translates to them really getting socked when they deploy

Well you are half right. Female driver, male passenger.

 

[oldman45]

Divine intervention?

That is what keeps me halfway sane. Not sure about the others getting such.

 

[oldman45]

I used to work in aircraft life support engineering and worked with the life sciences lab on investigating aircraft accidents (fatal). All of these incidents can be explained, but not necessarily obviously.


5) The load path from the firewall would go right through the frame to the mounting area where the spare is bolted on. The mounts would have "felt" nearly the whole impulse, thus they broke. The lady, however, is separated from the load path as she is not attached to the car frame, but rather seated. The seat, belts, and bags are designed to attenuate the collision forces, thus allowing survival. She should only be dead if the engineers failed in their work. I've pulled a young girl out of an Explorer that she rolled (multiple times) after striking a curb, the entire vehicle was crushed and sitting on it's roof. The area around the driver's seat wasn't affected. She was ok (other than upset about having to tell her Mom about it). Modern cars are built to give up their bodies to save the occupants.

No doubt the occupant protection is getting better. Many people are riding in a cage surrounded by fancy cosmetic trim.

But then you see a really safe car get ran over by a semi on the interstate and I mean totally over. Had one last year where the truck hit the rear of a car. The car driver hit his brakes as a natural reaction. The semi then hit it again, climbing on top of the car so the front of the semi tractor was even with the front end of the car. I have photos of the car drivers teeth in the dashboard. Seven hours to get the semi lifted off the car so the man's body could be extracted.

No passenger compartment is made to sustain such an impact.

 

[oldman45]

I hope your not trying to start an "Are 12 gauge and 357 enough for self defense?" thread. That 380 thread is showing signs of Zombie-ism.

Nope, if I were to do that I would have to include that a 1911 in the caliber that Moses meant to be used will stop anything in one shot so the shooter would only need one bullet.

 

[The Big D]

"Lonely?" You always have us with whom to talk. Can likely find someone here 24/7.

BTW, I enjoy your posts; some are very interesting. Like this OP. Still working on the answers for you...stand by.

Be safe

 

[Gun Smoke]

Life is strange thats for sure...4 cases come to mind 2 gunshot victims and 2 vehicle accidents...The 2 gunshot victms happened exactly 1 year apart on New Years Eve... I bet y'all already know what happened...In case 1 Someone fired a gun in the air and the bullet came down and went through a church roof made of steel and hit a 6 year old boy in the head killing him...Shooting case 2 was this past New Years Eve...Same thing but this time the bullet went through the roof and ceiling of a house and killed a man standing in his kitchen...I know this happens but I don't understand how a falling bullet using only gravity still has enough energy and velocity to go through that much material and retains enough umph to kill someone but it's very apparent that they do....Case 3 happened when a woman side swiped a full size Mercedes Benz E class on the interstate which crossed the median and hit a VW beatle head on...Everyone but one, the driver was killed in the Mercedes but the driver of the VW lived...Case 4 involved a faimly traveling home from Atlanta airport in a limo which was hit by a drunk driver who lived but killed everyone but the father in the limo and he is a parplegic....God moves in mysterious ways sometimes....

 

[Iggy]

Oldman45,

I hear you man. 13 years of fatal traffic accidents among other things. Lots of sleepless nights.

The one I remember most was being at the hospital, looking through a window and seeing my son for the first time.

Nurse comes up and says there's a call for you at the desk

Fatal accident.. One car roll over into a deep gully. Man and woman killed. Coroner picks them up and leaves the scene.
Waiting for the arrival of a wrecker, checking one more time the interior of the car. Baby Bottle on the floor under the front seat.... Oh Cripes!! Please, No!!
Felt the babies foot crammed up under the dash board.

Next thing I know I'm sitting in my patrol car shaking like a leaf. I don't know how I got there.

Called the coroner back. Climbing back down to that wrecked car while waiting for the coroner to return was the hardest thing I have ever done.

 

[rcnixon]

Oldman45, my late cousin was an officer on a county police force in a very urban county in NJ. He and I were raised very closely, more like brothers than cousins. He would regularly vent to me about cases because we were close, he trusted me and I am one of the worlds greatest withholders. I won't tell second-hand stories, but some of his were absolutely hair-raising. I believe that I served as a mental "cushion" for him. He died in 1995 and I still miss him.

Iggy, God bless you for that night.

Two-fifteen is ten-forty-two.

Russ

 

[oldman45]

Oldman45,

I hear you man. 13 years of fatal traffic accidents among other things. Lots of sleepless nights.

The one I remember most was being at the hospital, looking through a window and seeing my son for the first time.

Nurse comes up and says there's a call for you at the desk

Fatal accident.. One car roll over into a deep gully. Man and woman killed. Coroner picks them up and leaves the scene.
Waiting for the arrival of a wrecker, checking one more time the interior of the car. Baby Bottle on the floor under the front seat.... Oh Cripes!! Please, No!!
Felt the babies foot crammed up under the dash board.

Next thing I know I'm sitting in my patrol car shaking like a leaf. I don't know how I got there.

Called the coroner back. Climbing back down to that wrecked car while waiting for the coroner to return was the hardest thing I have ever done.

Things like that are tough to go through. Been there, done that. Been on the scene when the parents arrived. Never pleasant. The dead children are the hardest. Before my mother passed away in 2004, I shed a many a tear at her house so the family would not see me doing so. None of my children has ever seen me break down but every one of them have gone to scenes with me. They never forgot what they saw.

People would not believe what all LEO, Firemen and such see. It is nothing like on television.

 

[Iggy]

People would not believe what all LEO, Firemen and such see. It is nothing like on television.

Maybe that is why so many of us have such a macabre sense of humor in our dotage.