DVI News 21 November 2011
20/Nov/2011
Four killed in plane crash, southern Poland14 November 2011.
Four Poles died on Sunday when a light aircraft crashed in the vicinity of Katowice, southern Poland. Two men and two women were aboard the Cirrus plane.
The aircraft had been flying from Italy and it crashed near the Silesian village of Zyglin.
Fire-fighters rushed to the site but no one had survived the accident.
http://www.thenews.pl/1/9/
25 killed as bus crushes van near Thatta
14 November 2011. Pakistan.
Twenty-five people were killed and 17 others injured, eight of them critically, when a bus hit a van, throwing it into a roadside ditch near the Wali Mohammad Rind village on Sunday evening.
The accident took place between Gujjo and Thatta when the bus driver trying to overtake the van lost control and rammed into it. The Badin-bound van fell into the ditch only to be crushed by the bus.
All 22 passengers in the van, including its driver and cleaner, were killed instantly. Three people on the bus were also killed. Two bodies became entangled under the bus tyres and a crane was used to retrieve them.
http://www.dawn.com/2011/11/
Nine die in Mandalay bus crash
14 November 2011. Burma.
Nine people were killed and 27 injured when an express bus travelling from Rangoon to Mandalay crashed in the early hours of Sunday.
http://www.dvb.no/news/nine-
Victims of Hawaii helicopter crash identified
14 November 2011.
The names of the Toronto couple killed in last week’s helicopter crash in Hawaii have been released by the Maui police department.
Lieut. Wayne Ibarra identified the couple as Stuart Roberston, 50, and Eva Birgitta Wannersjo, 47.
The two were among five people aboard the tour helicopter when it crashed into the mountain ridge on the east end of the Hawaiian island, Molokai.
http://www.thestar.com/news/
Research boost to help dogs smell dead
15 November 2011. Australia.
NO DEAD body smells nice, but subtleties in the odour of a decomposing corpse can reveal important information about how and when someone died.
Shari Forbes, a forensic scientist, has spent her career deciphering chemical profiles of the dead. Yesterday she was one of 203 Australian researchers awarded an Australian Research Council Future Fellowship, a federal government initiative to encourage researchers to pursue their work in Australia.
After 6½ years working in Canada, Dr Forbes will return to her academic homeland at the University of Technology, Sydney to lead a project that could lead to better training of forensic dogs used to detect bodies during criminal investigations and natural disasters.
http://www.smh.com.au/world/
Project Title: Establishing an accurate chemical volatile profile of decomposition for use in victim recovery in mass disaster and forensic investigations
http://www.arc.gov.au/pdf/
Xi'an restaurant blast kills 9
15 November 2011. China.
Nine people were killed and 37 others injured in a gas explosion on Monday morning in Xi'an, capital of Northwest China's Shaanxi province.
The explosion occurred at 7:37 am in a snack restaurant on the first floor of a 22-floor building, Jiatian International Apartment, in the southern suburb of the city.
A few children, students from a school nearby, were killed and some were injured.
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/
10 dead, 12 injured as home topples in C China
15 November 2011. China.
Ten people died and 12 others were injured when a home toppled in Yuejin village, in Central China's Hunan province Monday night, local authorities said Tuesday.
In all, 22 villagers were buried in the debris of the ramshackle house, where they were making funeral arrangements for the home owner's deceased uncle, according to the release.
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/
Four die as small plane crashes in Ivory Coast
15 November 2011
Four people died in a small plane crashed in western Ivory Coast on Monday.
a senior official at a hospital in Daloa, a western town in the cocoa belt where the crash took place, said he received four corpses after the crash. One was Ivorian and three were white foreigners but they had not been identified.
http://www.thenewstribe.com/
20 Years Later, Dahmer Case Still Provides Lessons
16 November 2011. USA.
The Milwaukee County Medical Examiner's Office investigates thousands of deaths each year. But there is one particular case that continues to echo through the halls 20 years later: Jeffrey Dahmer.
"You're always doing the same job," said former medical examiner Jeffrey Jentzen. "You have to do every case as if it's going to court, or as if it's the next Dahmer case."
And the details and evidence from that case are still being used to educate forensic scientists across the country.
Hundreds of pathologists, coroners, attorneys, law enforcement officers and health professionals gathered in Milwaukee for a two-day seminar on a variety of topics relating to forensic science, including learning from those who worked to give closure to the families of Dahmer's 17 victims.
Jentzen revisited the epic effort of identifying the seven skulls, four heads, four skeletons and various organs removed from Dahmer's apartment in July 1991. All of those items are documented in the Dahmer files.
Mementos like a county bus pass and a bathhouse ID card helped identify a few victims. Others were identified using dental records or rudimentary handwritten charts detailing names, ages, body parts and causes of death
Other victims could only be identified through speaking to Dahmer himself.
http://www.wisn.com/r/
Nine killed, 13 injured in Punjab road accidents
16 November 2011. Pakistan.
At least nine persons including two women and two young girls were killed and 13 others wounded in two separate road accidents in different cities of Punjab on Wednesday.
According to police, the first accident took place in Bhawalpur near Head Islam where a Faisalabad bound passenger bus fell into Bahawal Canal after driver lost control of the vehicle.
The rescue teams and local people reached the scene and fished the bodies of two women and two young girls from the canal.
http://nation.com.pk/pakistan-
Police reopen mystery corpse cases
17 November 2011. UK.
POLICE are using new technology to try to identify eight bodes found in York and North Yorkshire over the past 30 years.
North Yorkshire Police says that identifying the human remains through such ‘cold case’ reviews is a "moral" duty, and say they will take advantage of technology that was not available when the remains were found.
http://www.yorkpress.co.uk/
Cold case reviews (Full details)
North Yorkshire Police are carrying out eight cold case reviews into previous investigations where a body or human remains have been found but have not been identified.
Full details at: http://www.northyorkshire.
Relatives to identify crash victims’ bodies
17 November 2011. South Africa.
Authorities are expected to release the bodies of the 20 people who died in the crash on the N1 near Prince Albert in the next few days, as relatives start the painful process of identifying their loved ones.
On Wednesday, the relatives of some of the people who died in the accident, which involved two taxis smashing into a truck on the N1 84km north of Laingsburg, had started arriving at the Oudtshoorn pathology laboratories to identify their next of kin.
However, some of the victims were so badly disfigured they were not identifiable, according to provincial Health spokeswoman Faiza Steyn.
Provincial police captain Malcolm Pojie said “Forensic pathologists have only started with the autopsies today (Wednesday) and while some of the family members have started arriving in Oudtshoorn to identify the bodies, we will not release any of the names until we have positively identified the deceased.”
http://www.iol.co.za/news/
Four dead in plane crash near Perryville
18 November 2011. USA.
Four people are dead after a single-engine plane crashed on a hillside in Perry County Thursday, outside of Perryville.
The Federal Aviation Administration said Friday that the aircraft went down under “unknown circumstances” in a wooded area four miles south of Perryville at about 4:30 p.m.
Perry County Sheriff Scott Montgomery said that hunters first notified emergency officials and led them to the scene.
http://thecabin.net/news/
Another child dies after bus crash – Toll 21 Dead
18 November 2011. China.
The death toll in a school bus accident in Northwest China's Gansu province rose by one to 21 Thursday night, local authorities said.
A five-year-old boy with severe brain and abdominal organ injuries died Thursday night in a local hospital after treatment failed, according to the county government of Zhengning where the accident happened.
The victims, 19 preschoolers and two adults, died when their nine-seat school bus illegally carrying 64 people crashed head-on with a coal truck in Yulinzi township, Zhengning, Wednesday morning. A further 43 were injured.
Li Jungang, chairman of the Little Doctor Kindergarten in Zhengning, was detained on Wednesday for "liability issues," Zuo Jianghua, a spokesman for the Qingyang city government which has jurisdiction over Zhengning, said on Thursday.
The Little Doctor is the only kindergarten in Yulinzi township. With over 700 children, the privately-run kindergarten has only four vans. The seats had been removed so more passengers could be crammed in.
http://usa.chinadaily.com.cn/
Reading Bones to Identify Genocide Victims
18 November 2011.
Bones are life’s records. The forces of a lifetime — diet, accidents, age — are inscribed upon them. Forensics experts use bones to interpret these stories, or so-called osteobiographies, which can identify a person’s identity and cause of death.
Eric Stover helps piece together the narratives left behind in the bones of war crime victims. Currently director of the Human Rights Center at the University of California, Berkeley, Dr. Stover’s work has taken him to Guatemala, Iraq, Rwanda and other sites of human rights atrocities. The evidence he uncovers can be used to prosecute crimes against humanity and return victims’ remains to their families.
During a recent forum organized by the Vera List Center for Art and Politics, Dr. Stover shared some of his experiences with a packed Brooklyn auditorium.
Full article at: http://atwar.blogs.nytimes.
Quakers Hill fire victims formally identified - Strike Force Westall
19 November 2011. NSW. Australia.
Police have formally identified three of the five people who died following a nursing-home fire at Quakers Hill, in Sydney’s north-west, yesterday morning.
Investigations are continuing and two other victims are yet to be formally identified.
The fire broke out at the facility on Hambledon Road, Quakers Hill, about 5am yesterday.
Three residents died in the blaze.
Fifteen were admitted to the intensive care units with a fourth person passing away late yesterday afternoon and a fifth this morning.
http://www.police.nsw.gov.au/
Man charged with murder following Quakers Hill fire - Strike Force Westall
19 November 2011. NSW. Australia.
Detectives have charged a man with four counts of murder following a fatal fire at an aged care facility in Sydney's north-west.
Emergency services responded quickly to reports a fire had broken out at the facility on Hambledon Road, Quakers Hill, about 5am yesterday (Friday 18 November 2011).
http://www.police.nsw.gov.au/
Victim’s identity changes
19 November 2011. USA.
Police Friday released a new identity of a man found dead inside a bloody Basswood Avenue N.E. home Wednesday.
Police Chief Paul Monroe said fingerprints and tattoos led police to identify the dead man as Donyell Johnson, 40, of Long Beach, Calif.
Initial reports said Martin L. Reed, 42, of Long Beach, Calif., was the man found dead in the home.
But police determined later Thursday that Reed was not the man's "true identity."
Reports said investigators believed the man's name was Martin Reed based on what his girlfriend, Nicole Shaughnessy, told investigators and 911 dispatch.
http://www.tribtoday.com/page/
Onderzoek na vondst beenderen
Investigation after bones found
20 November 2011. Holland.
The Disaster Victim Identification Team is still investigating the femur and other bones that were brought out last week at the Vandamme lock. The bones are those of a man between 25 and 35 years old.
http://www.nieuwsblad.be/
Suben a 13 los muertos por un accidente de autobús en México
Up to 13 Dead in bus crash in Mexico
20 November 2011.
The death toll from a bus accident in Malinalco (Mexico State) rose to 13 after another body was found in the wreckage of the bus that fell into a ravine this morning.
"Unfortunately at the start of the work of lifting bodies at the crash site was located another body," explained the Public Safety Department of State in their own social network Twitter.
41 people were injured in the accident.
Of the 13 deaths, 5 were men and 8 women, although they have not disclosed their identities.
http://www.google.com/
Sixth person dies after nursing home fire
20 November 2011. Australia.
A sixth person has died as a result of Friday's fire at a Sydney nursing home.
Police have confirmed that a 79-year-old woman died at Liverpool Hospital this morning.
Police have yet to name two of the other five victims
http://www.abc.net.au/news/
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