Forensic Firearm Case

Alexys Bergeron

October 13, 2014

Forensic Firearm Case

                One still night in an upscale boulder, Colo. Neighborhood of January 2009, residents heard three loud and shocking explosions. Some of the curious neighbors flew to the window and saw a light-colored sedan speeding away and then a few moments later someone found a not so great scene. Officers and detectives flew to the scene and concluded rather quickly that the victim had been shot three times at close range with a 12-gauge shotgun. Three of the shell casings were around the victim’s bloody body. Later on the reconstruction of the crime scene had shown that two of the shots were delivered most likely when the victim was still seated in the car. One of the shots were fatal, the other wasn’t. Then the victim was dragged out of the car, laid on the icy and cold road, had the shotgun muzzle placed between the victims eyes and for the third and final time the trigger was pulled. A few days later, Joseph Carlos Abeyta was arrested and was charged with and later found guilty with first degree murder of his once friend, William D. Andrews.  The days and months following, the detectives looked for the murder weapon, they knew they were looking for a sawed-off, pump action 12-gauge shotgun with a pistol grip. Of course, the weapon used in the murder was never found.

                In order to solve this case, an agent named Dale Higashi used ballistic physical evidence. He testified that a fired 12-gauge shell had been recovered from another location was fired from the same weapon that killed William Andrews. This is important because an hour before the actual murder, the gun was given to Abeyta who of course went and killed William Andrews which led the police to discover the fire casings left behind. To complete the reconstruction of the murder, Higashi fired the same kind of ammunition from shotgun barrels of different lengths.  He did these from the approximate distances between the victim and the shotgun muzzle at the time these were shot. This ballistic data was entered into NIBIN (the National Integrated Ballistic Information Network). If this information led to a rifle used in another crime, it could be an easy way out. But of course the information didn’t match in this case, but it could help a case in the future.