JSU Forensics expert shares insight on Charlie Kirk shooting

I know that we're talking about the assassination of Charlie Kirk. So kind of just your initial reaction. I think that everyone seeing the shooting take place at such a large gathering, it's shocking. You see the videos. Kind of talk a little bit about from your point of view,

what you saw when seeing those videos and things like that. Well, initially, other than the absolute horror of it, one of the things that struck me from a forensics perspective is the fact that only one shot was fired. Many of these shootings that we have nowadays, you have individuals that will fire multiple rounds at a scene. All you have to do is think back to the recent shooting in Minnesota at mass with the Catholic school there.

And that's kind of arbitrary, I think, just randomly. This was not... There was a level of precision to this. The fact that the crowd was only hearing... They only heard one report of a rifle. And when I say report, I mean the sound kind of traveling forth. And you've got a big group of people that are assembled

down there, so 3,000 sets of ears. That was a crowd estimate at least. Also, to the precision, again, what they're saying is this shot was fired from an elevated position, second story, two-story building, flat surface, and the shooter is firing downward. If people take a look at the schematic where Charlie Kirk was positioned, it's actually down in an amphitheater in the center of campus. So it's kind of ringed with the exterior bleachers that, you know, many universities have. I think we have one here at Jack State. Subject is firing from an

elevated position down. And when I initially saw the video, and again, I recommend not to watch it because it's so horrible. But from a scientific perspective, as I was watching this, it's a single shot and it enters to the left of what's referred to as the midline in the neck. There is a copious amount of blood that issues from this defect immediately. And one of the things that was kind of interesting is that Charlie actually, he actually drew his right arm up. There were many people that were, you know, that have come across my feed and have reached out to me and said this

reminded them of JFK. You remember infamously in the Zapruder film, he raises his hands. This is generally a response, a neuromuscular response. Just to kind of frame it, if you ever watch college football and people get hit in the head or they sustain a spinal injury, this neuromuscular response, it almost looks like they're seizing. Well, his right hand raised like this, and then he topples over. The clearance that the shooter had, because he was under a tent, Charlie's position under a tent, it had to clear that on the top side, and then this is the really chilling part.

This round passed over the tops of hundreds of people's heads that were gathered there just forward of his seating position. And it wound up here. And again, you can have a professional shooter that can come on and talk about things like bullet drop and wind and all that sort of stuff. I knew it was odd in one sense because we only heard one shot. And as it turned out, FBI is now revealing that they have recovered a bolt-action rifle. Initial reports are that it is a Mauser 30-06.

So that's a 30-caliber round. The 06 part comes in, the round was actually developed in 1906. It's a weapon of war that was used in World War I, World War II, and into Korea, that caliber was, okay? The Mauser is a German manufactured weapon originally. So one of the things that kind of struck me about this is how... Because a Mauser is a very robust weapon. It has a wooden stock. It's not like a modern weapon where it's easy to break down. How did he get that up on the roof and nobody see him? Also, the video that we have of him coming off of the building,

it doesn't appear that he has a weapon in his hand, but this weapon was found deposited out in a wooded area that's just adjacent to campus. It's not like it's out in the wilderness where they found this. And the authorities believe that that was his Exville area. He was moving away from the spot at that point in time, left it there. Another odd piece to this, he didn't cycle the weapon apparently, because the spent round was still in with a bolt action rifle. You physically have to cycle it like this and introduce a new round, a live round into

the chamber. That didn't happen, Gracie. It didn't happen, and he actually deposited this weapon with that spent round still in place. They've recovered a palm print from the surface of the weapon. But again, if this kid has never been, the alleged suspect has never been hooked up on charges, his prints are not going to be in NCIC. So you won't have anything that matches back to him. I

mean, it's great that they recovered it. You can get a print from him now. They can compare that. But if folks are thinking, yeah, they'll put it into the system and find it, I think that that would be fools there, and you're not going to find it there. They'll run it anyway. There were other prints that were left behind. There's an image from the top of the building that has emerged now, because the top of the building is actually covered in gravel, with evidence markers surrounding it.

You can see where there's an impression in the gravel that appears to be consistent with somebody laying in a prone position, and the line of sight is directly where Charlie Kirk was positioned from there.

So going back a little bit to what you were saying about right after Charlie got shot and his reaction or his the way that his body moved afterwards. Do you think that. I think that a lot of people are wondering because there were rumors initially that he could have lived. But when you saw the video. Did you think that he could live from that?

No, no, I didn't. I felt as though that if we had a team of the finest UAB vascular surgeons standing there adjacent to him, ready to go, I think this was an unsurvivable injury. He sustained. I haven't seen the autopsy results. I don't think that any of us will until after, and there will be a trial. They're putting together a packet right now. The trajectory of this round, where it kind of, I think that it may have, obviously it transected the vessels in his neck. You've got, and everybody's pretty much aware of this, when you feel your pulse adjacent to your larynx here,

you can actually feel the pulse throbbing. Well, this shot was just to the left of larynx. And what's next along that path? Well, it's cervical spine. So if you think about C1, C2, C3, C4, anything in that range that's unsurvivable, generally, because in that area, it actually controls the diaphragm, taking in air, pushing out air.

You're not going to have that capability. I think that people want to try to take comfort in the idea that maybe this was instantaneous, he didn't suffer. I can't answer that truthfully. I don't know. But I will say this was unsurvivable, certainly unsurvivable injury that he sustained.

And when you talk a little bit about the distance that the shooter was from Charlie and where the bullet landed, where do you think that he was possibly, is there any way to know where you think he was aiming? You wouldn't think that he would aim for his neck.

No, I don't know that we could necessarily get an idea as to where he was aiming. However, the trajectory, trust me, the FBI is going to be all over this. This area is going to be locked down. They're going to go back in and do a shooting recreation in this environment. And again, you're dealing with a one shot.

They will have to approximate the location where Charlie Kirk was positioned relative to where they suppose that the shooter was positioned. I'm not saying this is an elementary thing to do, but when you consider some of the crime scene reconstructions that the state and state officials, state forensic scientists, as well as FBI forensic scientists do, this is going to be kind of simplistic relative to this. They can get an idea, but there are too many other factors that are associated.

Let's just say there is actually something that is referred to as bullet drop. From 200 yards, I don't think you're talking about that much bullet drop, if any at all. What that means is very simple. What that means is when a round is fired, just like every person on earth, we're all impacted by gravity. Well, projectiles are no different. So gravity is going to begin to pull that round actually down like this. So let's just say that individual may have been aiming, you know, for center mass of someone's head.

It could drop, you know, potentially that much, but you also have crosswinds. You have tailwinds. All these other things kind of affect it. They can get a generalized idea, though, and they're going to do quite the recreation that will eventually be presented in court. I can guarantee that.

And that was kind of leading up to my next question. We heard reporters say this morning that it's still set up. The tent that Charlie was under is still there. It's kind of like they've not touched it. And it's been close to 48 hours since it took place. Talk a little bit about that and processing such a large scene. There were so many people there.

Yeah, there are a lot of people and you know I was chatting with somebody earlier talking about video. I mean we don't go anywhere without these doggone things in our hand and when you go to an event like this with such a high profile subject, people are going to be videotaping everywhere. So you've got multiple POVs. The question is how many people fled just out of fear and they left, they took the evidence with them. You're going to have multiple perspectives, which is completely different. You talk about

people thrown out in the JFK assassination. You had one PO, and that was Zapruder. Well, there may have been others, but the Zapruder's... Nobody had phones back then to videotape these things. They're going to lock this down. And let me tell you, let me just break this down to you, because that is not the only scene you have here. This is how complex this is. So in forensics, what we teach here is that you've got primary, secondary, and tertiary scenes. So with the site where Charlie was shot, that's going to be your primary scene. The roof is a scene where the weapon was deposited is a scene. This guy's domicile is a scene. His car is a rolling

scene. If it was parked, we've heard information it may have been parked in a church. We don't know. We haven't been able to confirm that yet. The car may have been in a parking lot somewhere there. That was a conveyance for him to show up in order to perpetrate this crime, that's going to be a scene. So any other location, it's not just about in the heart of this university, the scene being locked down in the tent and good on them that they've done that. There's going to be a lot of other spots that are locked down.

This is a massive undertaking. I think one of the... And again, this is just me stating an opinion here, but I think one of the... And again, this is just me stating an opinion here, but I think one of the biggest concerns, particularly nowadays, was this suspect affiliated with anybody else? Was there anybody else involved? Because if his level, if he has comfort with this level of violence, if there's anybody else in his cohort, you really want to try to figure out

if they're capable of this as well and interdict that situation. So there's a lot, it's not just that this is solved and that we're gonna move on, no, no, no, no, no. That's not how this works at all. This is gonna be a very complex investigation moving forward.

And we heard the FBI and law enforcement say this morning that, you know, this is a historic arrest. It happened in a historic amount of time, is basically what they were saying. Do you think that? Do you think that it was very quick from what they were basing this off of? I don't know that I would use the term historic,

but I was impressed with how quickly the arrest was made. Yeah, historic is not necessarily an adjective I would use for this. I think that it's an example of everybody working together. And that's one of the biggest problems that you have with any investigation that's multi-jurisdictional because the feds are involved in this.

You've got the state police in Utah, they're involved. You have local constabulary, including probably campus police officers and the towns police. Everybody is involved in this. If you can get everybody on the same sheet of music, it makes things flow quite easy. I think one of the really interesting things that they did pretty quickly, and this kind of shocked me, is how quickly those images got out there from those kind of infamous stairwell images where they've got these captures out there. That is so impactful

now because, again, you can't escape from it. If law enforcement can do that, they've got... Now, it is literally, the military says force multiplier. You've literally got thousands and thousands of sets of eyes now on this guy, anywhere he's ever gone, anything he's ever done, friends, families, enemies, it doesn't matter. They're going to be visualizing this. And I think you'd probably agree with me, Gracie, this is one of the hottest stories

in the news. You got eyes all over this thing. And it's because they released those images so quickly that I think that this led to affecting an arrest, to tracking him down. And they've always known more than they had initially released, I'm sure. This arrest took place, I think, as we're speaking right now, probably during the 10

o'clock hour, PM, last night. And it was kind of done without a lot of fanfare, right? We didn't hear it. It wasn't like busting loosely. There were rumors all over the place, but it was confirmed this morning by the president There were rumors all over the place, but it was confirmed this morning by the president

on air.