Documentation

All ballistic injuries and evidence should be photographed and documented with written and diagram information. An identification system corresponding to associated wounds needs to be used (Merck, 2013). Numbers may be used to identify other lesions or wounds on the animal’s body. Dr. Melinda Merck suggests a letter-number system where letters designate the gunshot wound and numbers designate entrance versus exit wounds; the number one (1) is used for entrance and the number two (2) is used for exit wounds. For example; Al = entrance wound A, A2 = an exit wound associated with Al (Merck, 2013).

Projectile wounds that are identified with a letter or a number does not designate the sequence in which the gunshot wounds occurred. It is a common practice among medical examiners, according to Dr. Mary Dudley (boarded in Anatomic and Forensic Pathology, former Chief Medical Examiner, Jackson County Medical Examiner’s Office, Kansas City, Missouri) to start number or lettering sequences of projectile wounds from the head working caudally (personal communication, Dudley, 2018).

The gunshot wound location should be identified using location direction references (e.g., ventral, cranial) and measurements of nearby anatomical landmarks. The wound and surrounding characteristics need to be described (Merck, 2013). In the case of a shotgun wound, where multiple wounds are present, they should be grouped (Merck, 2013). Surrounding characteristics must be referred to like the hands of a clock, making the midline of the body 12:00.

Injuries will be described involving all tissues and/or organs penetrated or perforated. The pathway of the projectile through the animal’s body will be documented. A suggested method for directionality of a projectile is to keep it simple, using terms front/back, side to side, and up/down (personal communication, Dudley, 2018). The appearance and weight of any recovered ballistic evidence needs to be described and its location documented (Merck, 2013; Bradley-Siemens & Brower, 2016; Bradley-Siemens et al., 2018).

Conclusion

Deciding to accept any form of veterinary forensic case, projectile injury, or any other type of case can be challenging for veterinarians and veterinary pathologists. Understanding what additional tasks a forensic examination may require and what expectations exist beyond traditional diagnostic reports is a crucial part of the decision-making process. This chapter provides background information on the types of projectile injury and describes examination techniques. In addition, it is the author’s hope that the necessity for establishing relationships with an extended team of forensic experts and forensic laboratories required for these types of forensic cases has been clearly conveyed.

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