Browsing by Author "Godhania, K."
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Item Open Access Investigating the use of concealable and disguised knives(Sage, 2017-01) Mahoney, Peter F.; Godhania, K.; Carr, Debra J.Knife-carrying and knife crime is a significant issue in many countries. There are a number of knives available for purchase that are designed to be concealable, or that are disguised as everyday objects e.g. combs, pens and belts. In addition, an experienced knife-user will be able to conceal knives around their person. The aim of the work summarised in this paper was to study the concealment and deployment of a range of such weapons and to raise awareness of such threats to the blue-light community (police, ambulance, firefighters and other first responders); allow comment to be made on the effectiveness of various scenarios that a knife-carrier might use to carry and deploy a disguised or concealed knife; and measure the time to deployment of a disguised or concealed knife from different locations on an assailant’s body so that suitable defensive responses can be designed and assessed. High-speed video was used to assist in studying attack sequences and allowed assessment of the speed of attack; this typically varied from 0.5 seconds to 2.3 seconds.Item Open Access A pilot study examining garment severance damage caused by a trained sharp-weapon user(2016-07-04) Cowper, E. J.; Mahoney, Peter F.; Godhania, K.; Carr, Debra J.; Harrison, K.The pilot study summarized in this paper aimed to raise awareness of a gap that exists in the forensic textile science literature about damage caused to clothing by trained sharp-weapon users. A male trained in the Filipino martial arts discipline of Eskrima performed attack techniques on a physical model of a male torso covered with a 97% cotton/3% elastane knitted T-shirt, that is, a garment commonly worn by males. Fabric severance appearance created by three different, but commonly available, knives was evaluated. High-speed video was used to capture each attack. After each attack the resulting damage to the garment was assessed. This pilot study highlighted differences in severances associated with weapon selection, that is, not all knives resulted in similar patterns of textile damage. In addition, a mixture of stab and slash severances were observed. The findings demonstrated the possible misinterpretation of textile damage under these circumstances compared to damage patterns reported in the existing forensic textile science literature for more commonly occurring knife attacks (i.e. stabbings).