Fingerprint experts at the city Office of Chief Medical Examiner often help police solve cases while bringing closure to families in New York City.
Wednesday, January 22, 2025 11:12PM
Kemberly Richardson reports from New York City with more on the technology.
NEW YORK CITY (WABC) — Fingerprint experts at the city Office of Chief Medical Examiner often help police solve cases while bringing closure to families in New York City.
“No matter what, I have to be careful with every single print I handle,” said Adriell Mercado, OCME.
Mercado is hyper-aware of just how important they are, especially when it comes to identifying a body.
“Anything that’s going to disrupt the print itself and I could ruin the print and lose forever,” Mercado said.
He’s one of only two fingerprint experts at the city Office of Chief Medical Examiner where last month, a horrific case that came in wasn’t straightforward.
A woman sitting on an F train in Coney Island had been set on fire, police say by a stranger, who watched her burn to death.
Right away, investigators from this office headed to the scene and teamed up with police.
“We want everyone to have a name, we want everyone to be positively identified, we want to make these notifications to families,” said Nora Heidel, OCME.
That can involve DNA samples, dental records, and as Mercado showed Eyewitness News, fingerprints.
This method scans the print into a computer.
The information is immediately sent to other outside agencies.
“The top layer of your skin could not be there but I can still work with the dermal layer and work with the ridges and prints to get an identification of that person,” Mercado said.
He had to use advanced techniques on the subway victim.
“Generally fire victims or submerged victims in water are not able to get live scanned cause their hands are hardened they’re degraded or mummified,” Mercado said.
Nine days after the murder, he got a fingerprint match, but that doesn’t always lead to a positive ID.
“I’ve seen fingerprint reports come back with 10 plus names, alternate dates or birth so it’s not always a slam dunk,” Heidel said.
This time it was.
The victim was Debrina Kawam, a 57-year-old woman, whose prints were already in the system, given her past arrests.
Filling in the blanks is something this office is proud to do, giving families the answers they desperately need.
“It’s a difficult feeling to describe because you are providing the worst news that they ever received in their life but at the same time they are grateful to know what happened,” said Dr. Angela Soler, OCME.
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Fingerprint experts at the city Office of Chief Medical Examiner often help police solve cases while bringing closure to families in New York City.
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