Using science to solve a crime

Almelina Carrillo Case 2017

Abstract

Ms. Almelina Carrillo died after being struck by a bottle thrown from a building on April 19, 2017, aimed at people participating in a march in the La Candelaria neighborhood, Caracas. Based on two technical reports from the prosecutor's Office and the CICPC (technical and scientific police), a resident of the Rostol building, located 39 meters from the site where the woman was struck, was arrested and charged with homicide. The last second of the bottle's fall was recorded on video from the 10th floor of the Darijak building, located across from where the incident occurred. This paper describes the investigation carried out to determine the location from which the bottle was thrown, which was based on the following elements: a) analysis of the video that recorded the bottle's fall; b) altimetric and planimetric surveys of the site of the event; c) field tests; d) simulations using a mathematical model to determine the trajectory of a bottle in space; e) reproduction of the event with a physical model (scale model), and f) reproduction of the event with a computational (digital) model.
It is concluded that the bottle could not have been thrown from the Rostol building, as indicated in the technical reports of the prosecutor's office and CICPC, and therefore the accused person is innocent. Additionally, it is demonstrated that the bottle came from the Darijak building. It is shown that the technical reports of the prosecutor's office and the CICPC do not constitute scientific proof because they cannot be repeated by any other person as required by the scientific method. A summary of the investigation can be found in a video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUraHkGI72g