Local students advance to national skill competition

Students from the Aiken County Career and Technology Center and Aiken Technical College combined to take several top awards in criminal justice at the S.C. SkillsUSA Championships in Greenville earlier this month.

Amanda Johnson, Rusty Scott and Justin Williams, who are Career Center students in Brad Wilson's criminal justice class, took first place in crime scene investigation. They qualified for the National Leadership and Skills Conference in Kansas City, Mo., the second of Wilson's teams to do so in the past three competitions.

Five ATC students also qualified for the national event. Richard Sullivan won the criminal justice contest, assessing a domestic violence scenario. Jason Cumbee took first place for job skill demonstration, showing judges how to handle a dangerous suspect during a felony traffic stop.

The team of Joshua Tuper, Amanda Whaley and Allison Huff took first at the college level in the crime scene investigation. Tuper was on the Career Center's 2009 team that won the national event, while Whaley also took the Career Center criminal justice course. She is employed as a firefighter with Public Safety.

ATC dominated the job skill demonstration competition, as Khadija Hudson took second and Louis Hale finishing third.

Wilson said his students faced a scenario in which state troopers found an abandoned minivan related to the kidnapping and murder of a woman. The students had to process the vehicle and were the only team to find the murder weapon.

"Our kids were phenomenal," said Wilson. "Justin got a great print off a water bottle, and Rusty did a crime scene sketch that's better than some of the professionals. Amanda did a great job with the report."

Aiken Department of Public Safety Capt. Ray Scott was excited about both CSI team victories. He's been working with the high school and college students once a week on a variety of practice scenarios. As an added bonus, he's the dad of Rusty Scott, a Midland Valley High School sophomore.

"He really grilled us with mock crime scenes that were much harder (than at Greenville)," Rusty said of his dad. "We had to find 11 or 12 pieces of evidence at State, while Dad had 27 things at one car scene. He really put us to work in practice."

The elder Scott was pleased with the commitment of both squads.

"They worked extremely hard on Sundays for five or six weeks," he said. "We put them in situations of learning how to think how a criminal would act. It's about putting pictures of a puzzle together. I'm very proud of Rusty and all the others as well."

Dr. Wayne Davis, ATC's criminal justice academic coordinator, was appreciative of the efforts of Scott and Sgt. Karl Odenthal in setting up the training session.

"We value the support the Aiken Department of Public Safety has provided for our criminal justice program," Davis said in a press release. "They are a big part of our students' success."

Contact Rob Novit at rnovit@aikenstandard.com.