Aggregated News
MUSKEGON, Mich. (WOOD) — It started with an armed robbery at a Norton Shores Shell station in July 2014 — and a shoe that was left behind.
“Whoever he was, he ran out of his shoe while he was being shot at by the clerk in the store,” said the suspect’s defense attorney. “Ten rounds.”
But could police find the robber that fit the shoe?
Police say they did, that it was Elamin Muhammad, 38, of Caledonia.
But they also found badly degraded DNA inside that shoe — from two people — and tests could not say whether he was one of them.
The suspect’s attorney, Scott Pederson, said without the DNA, the case was circumstantial. He figured he could win it.
But then, he said, the developer of a new computer program called STRmix — first used in New Zealand — called the Muskegon County prosecutor. He said his program could narrow it down.
“It’s a computer program,” Pederson said. “It’s logarithms, math and a little bit of science.”
The program found a 1 in 20 million chance...