Students win crime scene investigation title

For criminal justice students Ryan Pendergrass, Josh Tuper and Rob Lowe, the crime's the thing - and so is helping solve it.

Less than two months after winning a state championship in crime scene investigation, the trio captured a national title, defeating 32 other state winners at the Skills USA competition in Kansas City, Mo., last week.

Pendergrass and Tuper recently graduated from the criminal justice program at the Aiken County Career and Technology Center, while Lowe just finished his junior year. Lowe and Tuper also attended Midland Valley High School, while Pendergrass graduated from Silver Bluff High School.

All three students received $25,000 scholarships from multicampus Brown-Mackie College. Tuper left Monday for Ft. Jackson and Army service; he completed basic training as a high school junior and plans to take military police training. Pendergrass and teacher Brad Wilson will leave Wednesday to visit Brown-Mackie's campus in Greenville, which offers associate and Bachelor of Science degrees in criminal justice.

The Career Center program in criminal justice just completed its third year and has quickly become popular under Wilson's leadership.

"The state victory gave me some confidence, as we had never won a state championship before," Wilson said. "I knew we had a good team, and they felt they would win anything. I am so excited."

As a Silver Bluff sophomore, Pendergrass attended a Career Center informational session and was impressed with Wilson's enthusiasm and plans for the curriculum.

"That sounded like a whole lot of fun, and I really started to get interested in the whole criminal justice program," said Pendergrass. "I've really learned a lot. We've have a lot of guest speakers from certain fields and had a lot of book work the first year. That really helped us about what they'll be teaching in college. He (Wilson) really challenged us."

Wilson has formed a partnership with the Aiken Department of Public Safety, which provides field trips and other activities. Pendergrass and Lowe said they got great support from Capt. Ray Scott.

"He's one of the main reasons we won state and national," Pendergrass said. "He took time out of his day with different crime scenes and went over step by step the stuff we needed to learn."

Lowe started the criminal justice program as a sophomore and said it has gone way beyond his expectations. He and classmates have earned certification in CPR and first aid and even homeland security through FEMA.

"We don't have a third year in the program, but I'm going to try to find a job related to criminal justice during my senior year," Lowe said.

He said Scott has suggested that he could spend some time informally with Public Safety's crime scene team members after school. Lowe plans to attend Aiken Technical College for a year or two, then look at Brown-Mackie or another four-year school. He's considering a career in law.

The three students took two written tests during the national competition, then tackled a crime scene scenario: An vehicle used in a robbery was found abandoned and taken to a police impound lot. The students processed the car and had to find six pieces of evidence - among them a gun under the seat, a hair fiber on the passenger floorboard, a cell phone with a clean fingerprint pulled off by Lowe and a toothpick in the front passenger door.

"This scenario was much harder than the state contest," Wilson said. "I watched the team from New Jersey and thought they would be awesome. They found four pieces of evidence. They then watched us, and they were so impressed."

Yet Pendergrass called the crime scene a cakewalk. They needed only six pieces of evidence but actually found nine, he said.

"We've really done harder practices," he said. "Actually, I thought we would lose horribly. We had practiced every day before state but didn't get a chance to practice at all before we went to the national competition."

Contact Rob Novit at rnovit@aikenstandard.com.