Oceanside High School solves the body of evidence

The “body” was lying on the floor, bloody and tangled, as Oceanside High School senior Andrew Leathem, 18, led his team of three crime scene investigators under the yellow tape and into the “murder” room.

The four team members, all wearing white Tyvek suits so as not to contaminate the scene, a classroom at Stony Brook University, moved around the corpse, quickly spotting both gunshot and knife wounds. They began collecting evidence — weapons, spent bullets, fingerprints, footprints, drops of blood.

All they had been told was that the victim, Wildcat Willie, had recently escaped from a Long Island jail with several other prisoners, and that there was a kidnapping involved.

Two floors up, in a forensics laboratory, several other members of the Oceanside CSI team waited to receive the evidence, evaluate it, and then identify the person or persons who shot and stabbed Wildcat Willie. A third group stood ready to question the eyewitnesses and interrogate the suspects.

As the student investigators worked, they were evaluated by a team of teachers and professors from the university.

Of course, this was not a real crime scene, and the victim was a cooperative inflatable dummy. The Oceanside team was taking part in the 2013 CSI Challenge, a contest to determine which of 34 teams from Long Island and upstate schools were the best crime scene investigators.

The Oceanside team won — despite the fact that it almost did not make it to the contest at all.

At the beginning of the school year, science teacher Jessica Kobes was tasked by department Chairwoman Kathy Chapman to prepare a team for the June 3 contest. But after Hurricane Sandy devastated the area, the school’s priorities changed, and Kobes was told there was no money to pursue the challenge.

The students in the Forensics Club, however, wouldn’t take no for an answer. They appealed to Chapman, arguing that they should be allowed to raise the $4,000 they would need to take part. Chapman went to district officials and was turned down. Then the students said they would fund their participation themselves, but, once again, they were rejected.