Car Suicide Cleanup

Eddie Evans, Crime Scene Cleanup

1. Biohazard Symbol
2. Suicide Car - Red
3. Some Suicide Cleanup Tools
4. Sequestered (sealed) blood
12. TOP

Below readers will find hyperlinks to relevant suicide cleanup pictures for cars.

1.Biohazard Symbol

This is a biohazard symbol. It is not a hazardous material symbol (hazmat). It signifies that contents for which it marks biohazardous are inside a container, bag, vehicle, and so forth. Oftentimes auctions use one of these to mark suicide cars for professional suicide cleanup practitioner's identification. Note "Passenger Seat" comment. Usually the suicide's reporting party has no idea of blood's damage to a vehicle or other enclosed environment. Here blood made its way through the seat and along seams to the floor. Once on the floor blood migrated.

I don't believe in letting biohazards have the upper hand. I do my best to destroy their ability to attack my person. So if I don't disinfect with a strong solution of bleach and dwell time first, I sealed dried biohazardous blood on this piece of carpet before touching it.

2. Suicide Car - Red

Readers will see various chemicals on top of this suicide car. What's more important here are the close working quarters, lack of water and electricity, and other fine things provided by homes and businesses. Sometimes this type of suicide cleanup works to a practitioner's benefit because old fashion cleaning techniques so common for so many centuries come to mind/ Plus, risks from splashing and splattering water and blood absent from the suicide cleanup make work move faster. Patience remains one of the main keys to safety`, in any event.

3. Suicide Cleanup Tools

Many tools and chemicals serve car suicide cleanup practitioners. It's a matter of personal choice when it comes to chemicals. Tools leave less room for choice.

Bloody Mary

A bloody marry has few competitors when it comes to full-tilt fabric cutting. Few tools come close to a bloody mary when it comes to speed and accuracy for cutting fabric and other materials. Then again, few tools will cut its master more quickly and deeply in the blink of an eye; hence, its name, from the carpet installers' lexicon.

Bleach

Then there's bleach, which few professional chemicals can match for availability and price. Although caustic and quick to cause rust and other degrading reactions, bleach easily neutralizes with water and and some higher alkaline products. As a mid-range disinfectant, few viruses can stand up to bleach. Be advised, though, once a bleach bottle is opened, it begins to degrade. Keep your bottles small unless you intend to bleach out a lot of blood.

Peroxide

No respectable suicide cleanup practitioner would dare work without peroxide. A mild disinfectant, it works great for highlighting blood and OPIM. In fact, spray beach into your suicide vehicle before doing anything else. This way you'll have an idea of blood's contamination and what you're looking at. You'll be surprised by how many minor blood spots pop up. Because of today's fixed color fabrics, peroxide will not cause color loss during a short period. Of course, if you're removing blood soiled materials anyway, there's nothing loss.

Working around fabrics and leathers requires testing first, no matter what chemicals you choose to use. Once these materials lose their color, it's not coming back, so test first.

It's important to keep a couple quart bottles of Isopropyl Rubbing Alcohol around for disinfecting your own skin and electronic surfaces.

Extension Poll

Anytime blood cleanup occurs in a biohazardous environment, at least one extension poll should be available with adequately designed scrub brushes and brooms. Disinfecting these materials with alcohol after a quick scrub-and-rinse takes only moments, and their importance cannot be over estimated. Use duct tape to secure various brushes, cutters, and other implements to extension polls. Reaching heights becomes hazardous when using stepping stools and ladders. An extension poll may save a cleaner from needlessly risking their neck for a simple spatter removal.

Fans must have their ceiling side dusted during each suicide cleanup. A good dusting tool attached to an extension poll can save a lot of trouble and embarrassment. Even on a suicide car cleanup an extension poll has a place. During the first hours of work it helps cleaners keep their distance from potentially infectious materials. After cleanup it helps to quickly reach across a vehicles roof, windshield, and bumper to dust quickly.

Here's some must have tools if you need to get going safely.

Presoak First

That's not bird poop on the windshield; it's cranial matter, brain and cranial fluid sticking all else to the inside of this windshield. There's no point in losing elbow grease on this reduction. It's pasted to this windshield like crazy glue, no kidding. It's a matter of dwell time, a favorite carpet cleaner phrase. Place a good sudsy soap (Surficants) on this windshield and let your solution dwell for as long as you might. If the sun keeps drying out your solution, place a piece of cardboard or tarp over the windshield as you work on something else.

4. Sequestered (sealed blood)

Fabrics soiled by blood must come out. Whether or not work takes place within a vehicle or outside of a vehicle remains up to the suicide cleanup practitioner. There are advantages and disadvantages to both approaches. Here with limited space a decision to remove a soiled seat and then work on it seem counterintuitive. But for the purposes of making good suicide cleanup pictures, pulling the seat worked out well.

See how a sealer (Zinnsser or Kilz) covers dried, flaky blood. This is important when a need for keeping blood down where it belongs. Airborne blood is biohazardous, and allowing a biohazard to become airborne makes no sense.

What else might have been done besides sequestering, sealing, this dried, flaky blood? Yes, I might have cut it out where it was found and then placed it in a bag full of chemicals disinfectants like bleach. I might have placed it in a red bag, too. For certain, wherever this icky stuff goes, it must be designated as icky stuff and properly disposed of.

Another approach calls for placing towels, bags, or other materials over blood soiled areas. These must then be duct taped or otherwise secured to blood seats. I'm not a fan of this approach, but sometimes I'm in the mood for it and so it goes.

Before pulling a seat like this one from a suicide cleanup car, it's best to know where you can place and work on it. There's nothing silly about walking around with a blood soaked seat in public places. People begin to talk.

Now, our next picture shows us brain matter on the side of a seat just before it's pulled. We can either clean this dribble before moving the seat, seal it, or take our chances and hope not to make contact with it. Since I'm not a full-body armor type guy, I prefer to clean matter like this, but first I give it dwell time with a good solution spiked with bleach. Then I scrub, wipe dry, and disinfect with a spray bottle, usually alcohol. (No Smoking)

Here's a classic biohazard situation. Dried blood on top of dried blood and who knows what else. I consider this stuff "hot" and treat it gently and lovingly. Yes, I will spray first, use dwell time, and most important, I will insure that it does not migrate as it become moist and loosens up. In the beginning this stuff has a consistency comparable to a giant, hardened scab, but this scab will not easily break off. It doesn't matter anyway. Anyone trying to scrape this stuff out risks making it airborne and therefore an airborne biohazard. More, if it does become airborne, it will float to places we need to work in later. Like I said, "dwell time."

Disassembly

Suicide cleanup often calls for disassembly, especially around vehicles and machines. Here we see our red suicide cleanup car's interior without its passenger's seat. Note our vertical view of the classic biohazard material mentioned above. It's a lot of stuff.

TIP

Anytime when doing a car's suicide cleanup, open the trunk if possible. Also, check the back seat carpet. Taking time for this observation may save time and embarrassment later. It's not unusual for a suicide victim to choose a hill or small slope to park before committing suicide. When blood hits the floor or middle-consol, there's a good chance that it will migrate either toward the engine or the trunk, depending on which direction gravity pulls blood. Sometimes a large suicide victim on blood thinners leaves a lot of blood. This occurs following a lethal razor wound or small caliber head wound. In these cases bleedout may become the cause of death, even with a small caliber handgun. Small caliber handguns do not always kill their shooter, but create a hole large enough for suicide victims' to bleed out until death. This leaves a lot of blood to chase. A good spray application of peroxide will help find which way blood went and how far.

This same logic applies in buildings, especially older motels and hotels with a bit of bend in their structure. It takes only a few years for some buildings to settle as their foundations push into top soil. Over decades some buildings begin to slant to an intolerable degree. On the beach in Long Beach, California, towering apartment buildings will soon be condemned because they've settled into moving sand and tilt to extreme degrees. One does not enter one of these apartments without feeling a bit oozy on a first visit. Blood cleanup in these apartments takes only a moment's forethought to figure out blood's migration goes with a room's tilt.

Bottom Door Panel

Take out your suicide cleanup car's bottom door panel. After cleaning and disinfecting it and the area it covered, leave it off for final inspection by whomever.

Blood and Wires

With the greates ease, caution, and tender loving care, cut whatever it is that you must cut. When cutting anything on or near a vehicle's floor, do not press down with your cutting impliment. The odds are too great that you will cut one or more wires, and if you do, run.