Trimble Forensics Symposium 2024: 3-Day Staged Terrorist Attack

On April 16-18, 2024, the Trimble Forensics team hosted 122 of our customers in Owensboro, KY, US for a training conference. The goal was to get face time with our customers and dealers to watch them work and to give knowledge back on how best to use Trimble solutions on a massive-scale scene that is a challenge to document and investigate, allowing them to hone their skills when there isn’t as much pressure. Unfortunately, these events happen far too often, and we are seeing our customers using Trimble technology to make sense of it all.

The event started with breakout sessions from Trimble personnel, dealer sales reps, and our customers presenting their experiences with attendees, led by Trimble Engineering Manager and Distinguished Engineer Richard Day, coming from across the globe to share his knowledge with users.

_{^{Richard Day explaining how the Trimble X7 and Trimble X9 3D laser scanning systems work.}}

We were assisted in the event by five Trimble Authorized Distribution Partners: Allterra Central, Cansel, Duncan-Parnell, Keystone Precision, PLI and Seiler Instrument & Mfg, and were joined by vendors Foster+Freeman, FoxFury and Skydio, who lent their expertise to the event.

^{_{Keegan Kinney's opening address}}

^{_{Past and present Trimble technology used in forensics work}}

At the end of day 1, users were briefed on the event they would be responding to the following day: A mass-casualty event at the Owensboro Sportscenter.

Then came day 2, the mock mass casualty event. At 8 AM, our customers were briefed on the scope of the event. Three car crashes, and officer-involved shooting, multiple shootings inside the sports center, a blood stain room where a machete was used by the bad actors, a detonated improvised explosive device (IED), an undetonated IED, and a final officer-involved shooting as the chaos was brought under control by the Owensboro Police Department. Once the briefing was complete, our customers were set loose to investigate the incident with Trimble solutions.

^{_{Kentucky State Police Lt Hunter Martin giving orders to his team}}

_{^{The fake bomb area and mock victims}}

_{^{One of the "suspects" with a mock undetonated IED vest and plastic weapon as the area is examined by an X7}}

_{^{Investigating the scene with Trimble equipment}}

^{_{Dusty footprints telling part of the story}}

For day 3, everyone was back to the Owensboro Conference Center to go over the data collected and to use the information to investigate how it came together. There were a few hiccups, but in less than 6 hours, the team was able to bring everything together and produce an analysis.

^{_{Trajectory cones showing the likely location of the shooter}}

Overall, the event was a success not just from a Trimble perspective, but from our customers' perspective as well as 100% of the survey respondents said they would attend the event in 2025.

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