Latest news with #crimeinvestigation
CTV News
7 days ago
- CTV News
'Project Ghost' leads to over 200 charges in organized crime probe
Toronto Watch Sean Leathong has details on Project Ghost, a year-long police investigation into an organized crime group linked to home invasions.
CBC
7 days ago
- CBC
Peel Police arrest 13 for Toronto-area home invasions, robberies
Peel Regional Police have arrested eight adults and five youths following an investigation into a string of home invasions and robberies in the Greater Toronto Area. The investigation, dubbed 'Project Ghost,' found an alleged connection to an organized crime ring.
Yahoo
15-07-2025
- Yahoo
‘Project Ghost' a policing victory against organized crime: Brampton Mayor Brown
Brampton, Ont., Mayor Patrick Brown on Tuesday commented on 'Project Ghost", a year-long investigation into an organized crime group. Brown said "it was just not a policing victory, it's a community safety milestone for Brampton, Peel Region and the broader GTA. This investigation involved more than a dozen incidents, home invasions, stabbings, shootings and coordinated luxury vehicle thefts. These were not random acts, this was organized crime.'
Yahoo
15-07-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
When blood hits clothes, physics takes over
Creating mock crime scene evidence can help forensic scientists better read the stories left behind by gruesome bloodstains. To decode some of these bloody stories, all a team from North Carolina State University needed was a combination of high-speed cameras, cotton fabrics, and a bit of pig's blood. Their findings of how common clothing reacts to blood are detailed in the September 2025 issue of the journal Forensic Science International, Forensic science is a relatively new concept, historically speaking. There are multiple major moments in its development, but the field of study can largely be traced back 115 years ago to a man named Edmond Locard. In 1910, the French criminologist first proposed his theory that 'every contact leaves a trace,' a concept now known as Locard's exchange principle. Those traces come in many forms– including bloodstains. But as Locard's principle implies, traces are also influenced by the conditions of the contact a century later, there are many high-tech methods for analyzing a violent crime scene's bloodstains. Forensic scientists gather evidence all the way down to the molecular level, but even a close visual read of the situation often offers invaluable information. For example, bloodstains may indicate the type of weapon, attack angle, and force of impact. However, these patterns are frequently influenced by the surface material's interaction with the blood itself, particularly when that material is clothing made from cotton. According to researchers at North Carolina State University, the results can prove frustrating. 'Textiles have complicated structures and are often absorbent. These characteristics can result in highly distorted bloodstain shapes,' the team wrote in their study, adding that 'complex stain characteristics can make bloodstain pattern analysis more challenging and less straightforward.' 'When blood strikes fabric, it leaves a stain. But it can be difficult to accurately assess things like how quickly blood was traveling when it struck the fabric,' Tiegang Fang, one of the study's corresponding authors and an NC State mechanical and aerospace professor, said in a statement. 'Was it going fast? Slow? Did someone just brush up against the blood? It's hard to tell, because once the blood comes into contact with the fabric, it wicks across the surface of the fibers in the fabric, spreading out.' This process frequently also creates thin tendrils known as 'fingers' that extend from a bloodstain's center, further complicating analysis. To study these and other attributes, Fang and colleagues used pig's blood treated to behave consistently across testing. They then lined up five cotton fabrics—plain-woven cotton, the front and back of cotton twill, as well as the front and back of a jersey knit. Next, the team used multiple high-speed cameras to capture the fabrics at four frames per second, splattering the textile samples at 12 different velocities. They reviewed the footage of their messes, and soon noticed the particular behavior of each stain's fingers. 'We found that the more fingers a bloodstain has, the faster the blood was moving when it struck the fabric,' said Fang. 'However, over time, these fingers may spread out and run together.' Another major velocity indicator came from what are known as satellite droplets. These are created when fast-travelling blood strikes the fabric, creating secondary stains around the central mark. 'The faster the blood was moving, the more satellite droplets there would be,' Fang added. Certain cotton weaves told more of a story than others, however. Plain-woven cotton's physical properties were much easier to read, while twill proved more difficult. 'It's clear that the specific structures of each surface play a critical role in how these bloodstains form and what we can learn from them,' concluded Fang. Researchers hope to conduct similar experiments on a wider range of fabrics, yarns, and weaves. Better understanding the interactions between these and other variables could help build a knowledge base that can then be applied to forensic crime scenes.
Daily Mail
11-07-2025
- Daily Mail
Bali cops uncover crucial clue in investigation into alleged gunman accused of killing Aussie gangster in luxury villa
The DNA of the Australian man executed in an alleged gangland killing in Bali has been discovered on the shoe of a suspect. Zivan 'Stipe' Radmanovic, 35, was shot dead in front of his wife Jazmyn Gourdeas shortly after midnight on June 14 at a villa in Munggu, in Bali's south. A second man staying in the villa, Sanar Ghanim, 34, was left seriously injured in the alleged attack. The episode is understood to be connected to Melbourne 's feuding Middle Eastern crime syndicates. Senior Commissioner Ariasandy said on Friday that officers were one step closer to establishing who killed Mr Radmanovic. 'We found evidence linking the perpetrator to the items found at the crime scene... DNA on the suspect, which turned out to be the victim's DNA,' he said. 'This is one of the strongest pieces of evidence that indicates the suspect is the perpetrator, the executor of the crime.' Three Australian men – Paea I Middlemore Tupou, 26, Mevlut Coskun, 23, and Darcy Francesco Jenson, 27 – have been arrested and may face the firing squad if found guilty. The three accused remain in custody while police build their case which is now waiting on test results, Snr Comr Ariasandy said. 'Our investigators are still working to find the connection of all the pieces of evidence found so that we can confidently assume that they are the culprits,' he said. 'There are still some test that haven't been complete, and these will later be used by investigators to reconstruct the incident, which we suspect to be premeditated murder.' The DNA breakthrough by investigators adds to evidence found at the crime scene including CCTV footage, invoices, rented vehicles and hotel bookings. The revelation comes after a skin–care clinic in Melbourne's south, owned by Ghanim's partner and Ms Gourdeas' sister Daniella, was firebombed at 11.15pm on Thursday. Nobody was in the Toorak Road shop and police are now searching for those responsible who currently remain at large, Nine News reported. Daniella had been in Bali with her boyfriend and sister when the alleged murder occurred. She told Bali Police she woke up as the gunmen burst into Ghanim's bedroom and she heard an 'explosion'. The shop owner said she heard more gunshots and a window being smashed as the hit squad ran from room to room in the villa before she fled for her life. 'The witness [Daniella] ran out of the villa where she saw two motorcycles [or scooters] parked outside while she heard more gunshots,' a police officer said at the time. '[She ran to] the main road where she asked for help.' When Ms Gourdeas returned to the villa with other bystanders, Jazmyn was trying to stem Ghanim's bleeding as emergency services arrived. At the scene Police found 17 bullet casings and 55 bullet fragments at the scene. Bali Police revealed how the gang of suspects allegedly fled across Indonesia after the shooting, escaping the scene on motorbikes before switching cars twice on an 18–hour, 1200km getaway to Jakarta. The three can be held without charge for months while police investigate the killing. Ms Gourdeas also has links to Abdulrahim, who was shot dead in Melbourne in an ambush by an underworld hit squad in January. He was a regular on her social media account, frequently praising her photographs online before his brutal execution as he drove out of an underground car park at the Preston apartment block where he was secretly living.
