Gazette News | Forensic Chemistry Alum Sleuths for Lake County Crime Lab

Ohio University alum David Green ’89 was featured in a Gazette News article on “Crime lab analyzes trace evidence.”

PAINESVILLE TOWNSHIP – Bad guys better beware Lake County. The Crime Laboratory, located at 235 Fairgrounds Road, is home to a dedicated, highly trained, group of scientists, criminalists and former police officers. The Lab’s staff is intent on helping law enforcement agencies convict the guilty and exonerate the innocent….

Dave Green

Dave Green is a criminalist with a bachelor of science degree in forensic chemistry from Ohio University, 1989. He has worked at the Lake County Crime Lab since he was an intern in college, now in his 27th year.

Green was a fan of the Baker Street sleuth as a youth. He’s too modest to suggest he is a modern Holmes, but Green’s specialty, like Holmes, is trace evidence.

“There’s no such thing as a typical day,” Green said. “I’m always working on something different. It could be hair, fibers, paint, broken glass, even shoelaces.”

Green explained that paint analysis might be done for a hit and run automobile accident. Broken glass from a windshield could also be analyzed in the same scenario.

“Snow, soil and mud yields shoeprints and tire impressions at a crime scene,” Green said. “We make a wax cast of the impression and see if there is a match to the suspect’s clothes or vehicle.”

He told of one character who robbed a convenience store some years ago.

“The guy foolishly rode his bicycle across some freshly poured concrete,” Green said. “The impression his tires left was irrefutable. He was convicted and sent to prison. Criminals aren’t the smartest people in the world.”

He also helped convict a particularly loathsome father whose 2-year-old son was a patient at Rainbow Babies and Children’s Hospital.

“The boy’s life support tubes were discovered severed on more than one occasion,” Green said. “The father kept insinuating that the tubes were defective. When I examined the tubes under magnification it was obvious that the tubes had been cut. The implied motive was that after the boy died the father would sue the hospital and equipment manufacturer. The father was convicted of attempted murder and child endangering and sent to prison.”

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