Comparative Analysis of Bullet Injures of Biological Simulators of Human Tissues with «Fort» Pistol Gunshots

Pistols models"Fort" are taken as a standard weapon of units of National Police and armed forces of Ukraine. The morphological features of the gunshot damage inflicted by this weapon on the soft tissues of a human remain underexplored to this day. Thus, the study of damage of forensic medical analysis objects, caused by service pistol "Fort" gunshots requires the integrated approach. The purpose of the study was to investigate the character and morphological features of bullet injuries on the skin and the biological imitators of human tissues with pistols "Fort-12" and "Fort-14TP"shots. Material and methods. We carried out several rounds of five gunshots from distances of 1 cm to 1000 cm with pistols "Fort-12" and "Fort-14TP" by using 9x18mm standard ammunition. Skin and muscle flaps from pig corpses were used as the biological imitators of human body tissues. Results and discussion. With shots from "Fort" pistols, entrance wounds had round or stellar shape, rough, small-feathered edges with abrasion ring. In the center of the wound there was a tissue defect. There were no radial tears of edges. The main morphometric characteristics of the skin damage remained similar at all distances, with some tendency to slightly increase in size for the "Fort-14TP" pistol compared with the gun "Fort-12" damage. The abrasion ring was visible at all shots distances. The ring of dirt was first visualized at a distance of 10 cm and had a hexagonal shape with slightly rounded corners, sometimes rounded, with a width of 0.1-0.2 cm. It was established that in the subcutaneous fatty issue, along the wound channel, there was an incomplete decline of the temporary pulsating cavity, which manifested itself in the presence of a residual cavity whose usual legitimate had the largest sizes on the border of the transition of fatty tissue to muscle tissue. There was also a deviation of the wound channel from the straight line. Conclusions. Thus, the main metric characteristics of skin injures with gunshots at distances from 1 cm to 1000 cm differed insignificantly, with some tendency to increase in size of damage from the gun "Fort-14TP", compared to the "Fort-12" gun, due to increased initial of bullet. Mechanical action of powder gases did not manifest. The abrasion ring was detected at all distances of the shot and, according to metric characteristics, approaches the diameter of the bullet. The ring of dirt was visualized from a distance of 10 cm (at shorter distances masked with soot), and was slightly smaller than the diameter of the bullet. It had a predominantly hexagonal shape, corresponded with grooves quantity in the canal of the barrel of the weapon. In the subcutaneous fatty tissue, along the wound channel, a residual cavity was detected as an element of incomplete regression of the temporary pulsating cavity, the maximum amplitude of which was observed predominantly at the boundary of tissues with different densities (the transition of fatty tissue into muscle tissue). The overcoming of these heterogeneous mediums and the characteristics of the bullet flight led to a deviation of the wound channel from a straight line.