Kaboom! Forensics Students Probe "Crime" at Rio Rancho HighOn one sunny day recently at Rio Rancho High, just as a 'memorial gathering' was ending, a huge "boom" rang across the campus. Smoke billowed upwards from a car, its windows blown out. A student lay lifeless nearby, as screaming friends ran to the scene. As (real) media swarmed the area, cameras rolling, (real) paramedics started CPR and whisked the 'victim' away, leaving a 'crime scene' strewn with car parts, glass, blood . . . and clues.
And then, the only real thing about the whole gruesome scene arrived -- dozens of Rio Rancho High School Forensics students, marking and photographing evidence, interviewing "witnesses", and searching for clues. The "crime scene" was a carefully-staged fake, planned in exquisite detail by Forensics faculty and advanced students and executed with the help of the Rio Rancho Fire Department, Rio Rancho Police Department, and APD bomb squad.
See the slideshow here!
Forensics is one of Rio Rancho High's most popular electives and has been offered for more than 12 years -- well before the "CSI" series glamorized crime scene investigators and popularized forensic science as a career. The crime scene investigation exercise takes place near the end of every school year, and students working in teams have to figure out whodunit. It isn't easy. The scene is strewn with wreckage and clues . . . and students have to sift through the evidence to figure out what is relevant and what isn't.
Many of the crime scenes feature fires and explosions, but in the past other types of crimes, including school shootings, have been staged. One year, the principal's daughter was found "dead" -- and the principal was a suspect! Who did the dirty deed this year? Only the teacher, Mary Robinson, knows for sure!