A man's fingerprints led the Douglas County Sheriff's Office to quickly nab the gas station robbery suspect. KMTV got a rare look at the tools used to catch criminals.
The Kum and Go at 189th and Q was held up by knife point in the overnight hours of February 9th. The suspect hid his face by wearing a pair of gym shorts over his head. But what he didn't cover up eventually led to his arrest.
"Finger prints are amazing nobody's finger prints are the same," said Douglas Country Crime Scene Investigator Heather Rohwer.
Rohwer showed what it took to catch 23-year-old robbery suspect Trenton Vanschoiak.
"It's really difficult if you don't have video because then you have to process the whole door," said Rohwer.
Luckily they did. Surveillance video shows the suspect was not wearing gloves telling investigators exactly where to look for fingerprints.
"We were actually able to see where he touched on the outside of the door--and see where he touched on the outside of the door," said Rohwer.
Then after the CSI techs collect those prints, they hand them off to the latent print lab to see who they match to.
"We look at them an analyze them determine if they are of value to compare them to something," said latent examiner Angela Olson.
The prints are run through a computer system called AFIS to see if there may be a match.
"AFIS will give us a candidate list and you have to go through and do manual comparison and determine if there is an ID or not.
In this case, there was a match to Vanschoiak who was already in the state-wide system.
"We knew quite well who he was because we had dealt with him on some previous cases so that allowed our detectives to better prepare ourselves," said Douglas Country Captail Steve Glendt.
Glendt said this crime lab is what helps keep criminals off the streets, "They keep us in the game so to speak as detectives and investigators with the tools they have available".
Vanschoiack is currently in the Douglas County jail facing robbery and use of a weapon to commit a felony charges.
The Douglas County Sheriff's office also arrested 22-year-old Samantha Stern because she was allegedly with Vanschoiack during the robbery.
