This story was originally published on MyNorthwest.com
Crime scene DNA test results in minutes rather than weeks or months. It’s a new technology now in the hands of investigators at the King County Sheriff’s Office. It’s called the Rapid DNA machine.
“It allows officers to place DNA into a machine and instead of waiting weeks or months, you get results on whether that DNA is a single source of human DNA in 90 minutes,” King County Sheriff’s Captain Chris Leyba said. “Right now, every sample we collect at a scene. Let’s say we collect 14 blood samples at a scene, we have to send 14 samples off to the WSP Crime Lab. Whereas, with this machine, we can run 14 samples at 90 minutes each and determine, say, eight of them belong to the victim. So now instead of sending 14 to the Crime Lab, we’re only sending six because we don’t need all 14 analyzed anymore.”
King County first in state to get new DNA tech
Leyba said the technology has been around for about a decade, mostly on the East Coast, but is quickly spreading west, and King County is the first in Washington to have it in-house…