1. Are these injuries more consistent with blunt or sharp force trauma and why?
- 2. What would your ruleouts be (i.e., what do think may have caused these injuries)?
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These injuries Bama sustained are more consistent with sharp force trauma than blunt force trauma. Bama had what appears to be puncture wounds on the dorsal area of the head, with contusions around the area. Contusions can happen with either blunt force trauma or pressure. Here, the pressure of a fierce bite being inflicted or a sharp object being used to hit the animal would cause the punctures as well as the contusions, but not the tissue bridging.
Also, the loss of skin in this case does seem to be cleanly excised. The edges of the injury are not smooth and precise all the way around, but they are clean and precise towards the rear of the dog. Most of the edges are jagged but don’t seem to be caused by tearing. On one area of the skinning-injury, there is a distinct, large flap on the margins of the wound, which does not seem consistent with cutting, or skinning, but as you continue looking, you do notice that the edges are pretty defined.
I think the initial vet’s ruling of Bama being hit over the head with a brick and skinned using a sharp knife is correct. The injuries to the head and neck are consistent with trauma caused by a brick, as there is brusing, tissue bridging, and the eye is bulging. Also, was’t completely sure about the sharp knife and skinning idea in this case, but I went back and looked at the pictures again, and the incision over Bama’s hips and legs is very clean and precise, almost a straight line, which is more indicative of a deliberate cut rather than skin tearing.
Bama was housed with other animals, and lived in an area with no fence that was also heavily wooded in Alabama. He may have suffered these injuries at the hands of a human, but there could be a few other scenarios that happened. For example, another large dog could have attacked him and caused the puntcture wounds and contusions. If the animal was large enough, Bama’s head could have fit into the attacking animal’s mouth and caused the contusions and eyeball to pop out. Also, the attacking animal could have ripped off Bama’s skin in the attack as well, but the edges of the skin in the area it was removed would be torn and wouldn’t be a clean cut. The areas toward Bama’s abdomen (ventrally) seem to be slightly irregular, but the cut around the hips and legs is too precise to have been caused by an animal tearing skin.
Bama could have also had an incident with some type of machinery, where he got caught in some mechanism causing the punctures and skin to rip off. Bama could have also been hit over the head using a different type of object as well, like a hammer (something with a smaller surface area), or something with a point to also cause the puncture wounds. Personally, I don’t want this case to be caused by a human, because it is so terrible, so I am trying to find another explanation for Bama’s injuries.
and this
After analyzing the case example for Module 11. All the results found in the necropsy, has led me to conclude that these injuries are more consistent with blunt sharp trauma than with sharp force trauma which has to do more with incised wounds and sharp edged imjuries. With this case, it was kind of tricky because of how the dog looks at first, but when examining it very closely, the injuries represent blunt force trauma . The reason for this is the fact that the dog demonstrated to have blunt trauma’s type of injuries such as Abrasions, Contusions, Lacerations, and Fractures. First of all, the dog had 60% of the skin missing which represent an abrasion in the superficial layer which was scraped away. Moreover, the dog had a large external wound that when looking at the edge of the skin, it was consistent with blunt trauma. In addition to this Contution injuries (not at point of trauma) were found on the dog such as, the right eye was partially proptosed and diffusely hemoragic, these injury is consistent with blunt force trauma. Another evidence that demonstates this are the skull fractures that can be seen when the dog was shaved. the multiple fractures in the skull are also constant with blunt force trauma. Also, on the left side of the dead, there were areas of conduced bruised tissue. For all these reasons, I strongly agree with the statement that these injuries are consistent with blunt trauma. On the other hand, when it comes to what caused these injuries, I analyzed the injuries such as the tissue bridging and considered possible angles of impact on the dog and concluded that the dog was hit a solid large brick and the resulting Contusions demonstrate this. Even though the target was not the eye, the strong impact caused this hemorrhage in the dog’s eye . the dog also had very large punctured wounds and lots of tissue bridging
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