forensics quiz:
A twenty-year old man was found supine of Thompson Creak Trial with a bullet wound. The entrance of the wound was on the left lateral side 1 cm above the third rib. The exit wound was 5 cm above the belly button in the umbilical region. While tracing the bullet path you notice at the entrance the bullet travels in the frontal plane with a 45-degree downward angle. On inspection of the right side of the rib cage by x-ray you observe the 8th rib fractured. Fragments of the bullets are then traced to the final exit wound. What is the leading differentiation diagnosis (and why) and what are three plausible alternatives and how would you rule them out.
What happened.
Someone paid the best assassin in Claremont to kill this man. This twenty-year old man was a Senior at Harvey Mudd at the time. He was the top student here and many people despised him because of his good looks and overall perfection. Anyone could have called for him to be killed. Anyone.
Back to the story. The twenty-year old entrepreneur was going out for his routinely morning jog when he was shot. By inspecting the bullet wounds, we can easily tell that the assassin shot him from above. How? Might you ask. The assassin hid in one of the trees and waited for his prey. He used a gun with a silencer so that nobody would be drawn to the scene by the sound of the gunshot. Once shot, there are a few ways that he could have died.
- The bullet could have punctured the heart. If his heart were to have been punctured, many other surrounding organs would have been gravely affected also. He died because of internal bleeding, blood loss, and the fact that the heart was not longer pumping blood. The cause of his broken rib was also the bullet. The bullet went through his heart, hitting his 8th rib, and deflecting off and out of his body.
- Another possible case was that the bullet punctured the liver, which then would have released toxins in the body that would have pretty much poisoned him from the inside. This would've been how he died. The broken rib could have been caused by his impact with the ground.
- This is the least likely of these three to have occurred, but here it goes. The bullet goes in and misses all vital organs and goes straight to the eighth rib. It hits the rib, breaking it, and then the bullets splits into two, one piece leaving the body above the belly button, while the other would have deflected into the lung. The lung then would've filled up with various fluids, and he would've died, being unable to breathe. Again, the broken rib could have been caused by his impact with the ground.
The second two couldn't really have been ruled out, but the first one was the most probable to actually have happened.
