PS Sr. hypothesized in his Facebook Q&A last night that the car was brought up sideways on purpose to keep Toni's body out of view. I would hope this would mean that they had collected lots of evidence already when it was still in its original position, although I have no idea what kind of evidence they could have gathered at that depth in a moving river. Did they bring down lights, cameras, bags, etc.? Does anyone on here have any experience with underwater evidence gathering?
The company I own has specialized in vehicle recovery since 1981. A large percentage of recoveries are for LE.
It is not logical in any way to purposely bring up a vehicle sideways to hide a body from view of media or helicopters. The number one priority is to recover the vehicle without causing more damage--many many techniques available to accomplish this successfully--number two priority is not to further contaminate the scene and vehicle being recovered.
It's so very easy to use a tarp the moment the vehicle starts to emerge from the water. Really easy and every crime scene / forensic / detective has access to tarps as standard equipment. My company always carries new sealed tarps for this purpose and any company doing LE recovery that's professional should as well. Often the divers--really almost always--stay in the water to facilitate removal of the vehicle and get it covered the moment it starts to come out of the water.
Vehicle recovery is slow process the car just doesn't bob up unexpectedly--so plenty of time to control the scene.
Forensic LE dive teams in my experience are phenomenal folks. Not saying everywhere they are great but in all the years I've done this the divers usually are just great.
No matter how good, experienced, conscientious and how clear the water might be divers are NO substitute for a through forensic examination of a recovered vehicle in a controlled and secure environment.
I have seen a lot of talk about how divers could tell if windows were rolled down or broken out. This is actually easy to accomplish by gently pulling back the lip of the window gasket and using s light to see if the window is retracted into the door panel. You can try this yourself safely in your driveway.
The recovery IMO was horribly flawed. A professional company with trained and experienced personnel and proper equipment absolutely could, should and would have recovered her Focus without causing any substantial additional damage. I cringed when I saw how the car was being dragged. I have seen sloppy companies before but never ever ever to this level. It's embarrassing because a county guy or gal with a jacked up pick-up and a couple chains that grew up on a farm could have pulled her car out without rolling it over and causing damage. I'm serious. Every farm gets stuck tractors and rolling them over or damaging them is bad for the checkbook.
Just the way they used what we call a J-Hook to attach to one point on the car is horrible. There should have been proper rigging, a minimum of two points of attachment, snatch blocks, double winch lines and so many other things done to get her car out the way it was underwater without damage.
I spoke to this on another post but this is the worst recovery I've seen for a potential crime scene. Honestly.
Then to transport her car using an auto loader / aka Repo truck with the front wheels turning on a FWD car---potentially destroyed so much evidence.
The only time you drag a car the way her Focus was dragged is IF and only IF it's a "simple accident" without injuries and no crime investigation. Example 3 weeks ago we recovered a mini-van from a river that fell off a competitors truck because the driver didn't properly secure it. That's a hook and drag because the van is totaled and there is no crime or investigation. Even if it's a crash with minor injuries you better believe the personal injury attorneys will sue the living daylights out of a recovery company that improperly recovers a vehicle affecting their personal injury lawsuits!!!!
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