Complete decapitation by a self-constructed guillotine in a burned body - complex suicide or postmortem burning?
- PDF / 1,166,248 Bytes
- 5 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 53 Downloads / 157 Views
CASE REPORT
Complete decapitation by a self-constructed guillotine in a burned body - complex suicide or postmortem burning? Akiko Ishigami 1 & Satoshi Hata 1 & Yuko Ishida 1 & Mizuho Nosaka 1 & Yumi Kuninaka 1 & Hiroki Yamamoto 1 & Emi Shimada 1 & Yumiko Hashizume 1 & Tatsunori Takayasu 1 & Akihiko Kimura 1 & Fukumi Furukawa 1 & Toshikazu Kondo 1 Received: 21 April 2020 / Accepted: 20 May 2020 # Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract We report a suicide case of complete decapitation using a self-constructed guillotine. A 45-year-old man, whose body was severely burned, was found dead. The head was completely separated from the middle level of the neck, and a sharp blade with a steel frame was placed between the head and neck. The severance plane passed between the C4 and C5 vertebrae. Vital reactions such as hemorrhage could not be confirmed at the decapitated skin edge because the body was severely burned. Both common carotid arteries were sharply transected. Subendocardial hemorrhage was detected in the left ventricle. Only a little blood, but no soot, was detected in the respiratory tract, including the trachea and bilateral bronchi. Subarachnoid hemorrhage was noted at the edge of the cervical spinal cord. The saturation level of CO-Hb was 5.7% in the left cardiac blood, 5.9% in the right cardiac blood, and 5.8% in the peripheral blood from the femoral vein. Cervical transection was diagnosed as the cause of death. We believe that he was unintentionally burned by spread fire from an automobile after decapitation by a self-constructed guillotine. Keywords Decapitation . Guillotine . Burned body . Complex suicide . Supravital reaction
Introduction It is difficult to determine the cause of death in the case of a burned body [1]. Moreover, it is also essential to estimate when and how the injuries occurred, antemortem or postmortem, and whether the injuries were caused due to fire or not [2]. Decapitation is the separation of the head from the body; thus, it is a lethal injury. Suicidal decapitation is very rarely noted; however, a few cases of suicidal decapitation using a handmade guillotine have been reported [3–6]. Here, we report a rare case of suicidal decapitation using a self-constructed guillotine in which the victim’s body was severely burned.
Case report At approximately 5:50 am, a car had burned on the premises of an automotive factory, and firefighters found a severely * Toshikazu Kondo [email protected] 1
Department of Forensic Medicine, Wakayama Medical University, 811-1 Kimiidera, Wakayama 641-8509, Japan
burned body in the prone position beside the car while they were working to extinguish the fire (Fig. 1). The head of the cadaver was completely separated from the body. There was a steel frame (250 cm in length) between the head and the body, and four reinforcements were noted in the frame. The frame was fixed under the right rear wheel of the car by an aluminum sill, and a sharp steel blade (42 cm in length) was attached to the tip of the frame (Fig. 1)
Data Loading...
