Yuma middle school team wins state forensic science contest

Seven Centennial Middle School students walked into a crime scene in Phoenix Friday.

They spent the day gathering evidence, dusting for fingerprints, interviewing witnesses and trying to crack the case and find a murderer.

The crime wasn't real, but the police procedures the students used were, and their work paid off. Not only did they solve the case,

Centennial's forensic science class team won first place in the 2007 Arizona Forensic Science: Crime Scene Investigation Competition.

This is the second year in a row Centennial has placed first, according to School Resource Officer Alan Ienn. Ienn started the club at Centennial last year after hearing about it at a meeting in Phoenix.

"They did phenomenal," Ienn said. "The crime scene was a lot harder this year. A lot more evidence and a lot more evidence that was hidden. It was a lot more detailed than last year and the kids had to work a lot harder on the questioning."

Only 10 teams from throughout Arizona, five in the middle school age group and five in the high school division, were accepted for the state competition.

Two teams from Centennial made the cut. The members of the winning team were Rebecca Hawkins, Samantha Keiser, Rebecca Peterson, Joseph Domby, Garrett Rippe, Jacob Stiffler and Oliver Walters.

Crane Middle School and Cibola High School also competed for the first time this year.

Cibola's team was comprised mostly of students who had moved up from the 2006 Centennial team. They lost to Phoenix's North Canyon High School, whose team had placed first among high schools the previous year.

This is only the second year the forensic science competition has been held. It is organized by the Arizona Foundation for Legal Services and Education with the support of the Phoenix Police Department and the Arizona Department of Education.

Students are presented with a mock crime scene. The teams have to process and document evidence, interview witnesses and suspects and present their final hypotheses to the judges.

Vicky Farland, a Centennial science teacher and faculty adviser for the club, said it's an ideal way to focus middle schoolers' natural curiosity toward science.

"It's the best use of scientific method or inquiry that I could think of," she said.

Hawkins, an eighth-grader on the winning team, said that the hardest and most important part of collecting evidence was looking for details.

"Sometimes a good thing to look for is if there's a stray thing of (fake) blood that doesn't look like it came from the body," Hawkins said. "That could be from a suspect."

Walters, her seventh-grade teammate, said he thought it was amazing how much of forensic science had just come about in his lifetime.

"Twenty years ago they wouldn't be able to do anything we do with DNA and stuff," Walters said.

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Sarah Reynolds can be reached at

sreynolds@yumasun.com or 539-6847.