CT has become a standard tool in medicolegal practice. Postmortem CT is an essential aid to the pathologist during autopsies. Advances in technology and software are constantly leading to advances in its performance.
Survival time and physical activity following fatal injury are especially important during investigation of homicide cases and the estimation of a victim's survival time and physical activity following a fatal injury from a sharp weapon is a commonly raised issue, particularly at trial. According to the literature, survival time and physical activity after cardiac damage are short-term estimates without high accuracy. We report the homicide case of a young man who died as a result of a left ventricle injury caused by a sharp pointed weapon. This case is based on evidence from a video surveillance camera that recorded the whole scene after the fatal injury: The victim showed an adapted physical activity for 38 s, although the left ventricle incision measured 2 cm. Despite several cases in the literature, it is not possible to correlate precisely the size of the wounds and the acting capability.
In case of suicide, the presence of multiple entrance wounds is always suspicious. We report the case of a man who committed suicide by shooting himself three times in the chest and the skull with a submachine gun. The weapon seems to have been initially pointed in the precordium area with a lethal lesion of the proximal aorta. Two other projectiles were fired by the weapon and hit the neck and the skull of the deceased. The presence of three entrance wounds despite a first fatal wound could finally be explained by the characteristics of the weapon and wounds. Most suicides related to multiple gunshot wounds are explained by a first nonlethal shot but the use of an automatic weapon can also be found. In these last cases, medicolegal and criminalistics aspects become important in differentiating suicide and homicide.
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