Question: Do you have anything that helps you concentratewhile drawing the picture of how someone died?

Mark Hill answered on 16 Mar 2011:

Hi Sammy,

I don’t generally have to draw bodies, just photograph them if they are still at the crash scene, or later at post-mortem. The best thing for my investigation is if the body is still at the scene, without having been moved. I can get a lot more useful information and evidence from how they are sitting in their vehicles, or how they have landed, if they were pedestrians, motorcyclists, or cyclists.

There are some really useful maths equations that I can use and adapt to calculate speed, energies required, changes in velocity at impact, timings for time and distance studies (for example, in pedestrian collisions, working out the time-line of events – where the pedestrian was in the road at a given time in relation to the position of the car, hence who may have been at fault, or more at fault). Applying science and maths to collision reconstruction, together with elements of forensic science – cleaning marks, blood pattern analysis (the study of blood spatter to indicate a direction of impact) and mechanical skills, is what really keeps me focussed.

I have to always keep respect for the person who has died, for they were once someone’s family, but I must also put that aside, so that I can professionally and clinically gather the evidence available. I need to try and tell their side of the event for them. They can’t and someone needs to.

I hope that this answers your question.

Thank you.

Mark.