FORENSIC PAINT LAYER CHARACTERISTICS OF FRAGMENTS COLLECTED FROM PERODUA CARS

ROBI BINTI MOHAMAD RADZI, 1HASMERYA MAAROF, 2SOO ME TONG, 1UMI KALTHOM AHMAD

Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Science, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, 81310 UTM Skudai, Johor. 2 PDRM Forensic Laboratory, 8 mile, Jalan Cheras-Kajang, 43200 Cheras, Selangor.
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robi2@live.utm.my, 1hasmerya@kimia.fs.utm.my, 2soomt@rmp.gov.my, 1 umi@kimia.fs.utm.my

Abstract. Several road accidents typically hit-and-run cases, have often been classified as closed cases due to lack of trace physical evidence found at the crime scene. However, the presence of vehicle paint fragments may provide important links of the suspects car to the crime scene. Therefore, it is important to characterize and identify the car paint involved in the accident. In this study, paint fragments were examined using stereomicroscope for their layer characteristics in terms of the number of layers, colour and thickness of layers. The paint fragments were collected from several workshops, auction yards and salvaged used parts yards in Selangor and Perlis. Their layer characteristics were examined using stereomicroscope equipped with a digital camera. Out of 40 samples collected with multiple colour code, 12.5% of the samples had multilayered structure. The highest number of layers identified was 13. Most layers had thickness in the range 21 to 30 micrometer. Majority of the samples (42.5%) had three layers, as the common number of layers of a refinished car. Results of this study on layer characteristics of Perodua paint fragments indicated that multilayer paint fragments were highly discriminating and thereby posed greater evidential value for forensic accident investigation. Keywords Paint fragment, trace evidence, stereomicroscope, layer thickness, multilayers