Did you know that if you put a warning like, "Warning: Graphic Content" that this will not keep people away from reading things that they might find offensive or disgusting? In fact, you REALLY want to read it now, don't you?!!! :)
I mentioned that my second autopsy was a direct result of comments I had made during the autopsy from my first homicide case, but I never told you what the first case was!
We had been called out on a homicide at a trailer park on Saturday afternoon. The owner of a trailer home had shot at a burglar who had awaken him from sleeping. The burglar later died. So this was a case of "Was it self defense, or murder?" Although it sounds like a fairly routine case to work on, it really wasn't.
The burglar was an African-American male who had come into the trailer looking to steal whatever he could. Not knowing that the owner was still in the trailer, he began taking whatever he thought was of value. The owner, a white male in his 60's who had been sleeping in the back of the trailer, awoke and found the burglar in action. According to the owner, the burglar had a knife with him and came towards the owner. Fearing for his life, the owner quickly grabbed his .22 caliber rifle near his bed and began to shoot at the burglar. The burglar turned and headed for the door. During the shooting, the rifle jammed. "Oh, the gun jammed!" exclaimed the owner. Upon hearing this, the burglar turned around and headed back into the trailer to try to take a few more items before leaving! In the meantime, the owner unjammed his gun and began to fire again. This time his aim was good and the burglar was shot.
Stumbling out the door, the burglar dropped the items he had stolen and leaped over the fence directly behind the trailer hoping to get away from the gun fire. He was successful in getting over the fence. But what he didn't expect was the 200 feet drop to the ground below.
You see, the fence was what kept people from falling over a cliff that it was blocking. The burglar fell 200 feet below and later died. Amazingly, the man did not die immediately. After being shot and taking a 200 feet fall, he was still alive. He later died in the ambulance that was called to help him. After his autopsy, it was determined that he had died from the gunshot wound and not from the fall.
Well before we had the findings from the autopsy which we later went to, we had to determine if the owner had shot the burglar as an act of self defense or whether he continued to fire after the threat was gone. You see, if you are in danger for your life, you can use lethal force to defend yourself. But once the danger to your life ceases (like when a burglar is running AWAY from you), you cannot continue to keep shooting at him because that life threatening situation is no longer life threatening. The owner now found himself as a possible murder suspect!
People usually think of a homicide as the "illegal" killing of another human being. This is not true. A homicide is actually the killing of one human being by another human being, whether it is legal or illegal is not a factor in calling the killing a homicide. See, you learned something today, didn't you? :)
Anyway, our job was to find out if the owner of the trailer continued to shoot after the threat was gone. Through our search of the trailer and the surrounding area, we determined that his shooting was justified because we had found spent casings of the bullets inside the trailer and not outside. He had shot at the burglar just as he described...while his life was in danger inside the trailer, but stopped shooting after the man left the trailer. It was a justifiable homicide.
Oh, I almost forgot to mention... the trailer's lot number was 187. Now that probably doesn't mean much to anyone who is not from California. But remember, I had worked with the San Diego Police Department. In the California Penal Code book, the penal code number for a homicide is PC187. Coincidence or just plain spooky?!
At the autopsy, I got to see things I had only read about in books and seen in movies. Amazingly, I found that I was not panicked about being there and actually found it quite interesting. I recall everyone leaving the examination room with only me inside with the burglar on the examination table. All of his "insides" had been removed and only the surrounding back ribs were exposed as he laid face up on the table. The front ribs had already been removed leaving a concaved shell. The front rib cage is removed by what I can only call Gardening Shears. After the incisions are done, the rib cage is actually taken off by huge shears that break the ribs and then the front rib cage is taken off to reveal the organs. The organs are then removed, examined and weighed. The blood that is inside the body is removed by a laddle and placed in a container. So only the outer "shell" of the person is left when everything is removed.
I stood over his body and looked down into it. It was amazing. I remember thinking, "What kind of person can handle an autopsy?" Apparently I could. So the answer must be, "People like me."
After everything was over, the medical examiner came over to me and asked me what I thought of my first autopsy. "Not bad," I said. "Well at least it wasn't a stinker!"
See my earlier post, "Now For Something Really Gross..." for details on the results caused by that comment.
2 comments:
Very intersting stuff indeed! Though this really fascinates me, I don't really think I can handle being at a crime scene when bodies are involved. BUT, if you say that people like you can handle this, who knows, maybe people like me too! Maybe there is a side to me people don't know about.
You'd be surprise at what you can do if your job requires you to do it.
I recall going to a crime scene in which we pulled a van out of the harbor with a tow truck (I wrote a small post about this on Oct 24, 2005 under the "Super Glue" posting). The lab supervisor was with me at the scene and kept warning me to stay back from the van while the thing was being pulled in because he feared that the tow cable could break and whip across and injure me. He told me I kept telling him, "Don't worry... I'll be ok" as I kept videotaping the scene.
Later he said that for someone as mild mannered as me, it surprised him that I could do my job without fear to my well-being. I just said that it never occured to me that I could get injured because I had a job to do.
I suppose that people do things they would normally not do if they had to get the job done.
I wouldn't doubt you can do stuff like this too if you had an interest in what you were doing and that it was really important that you got it done right.
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