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Unusual death of a baby: a dog attack and confirmation using human and canine STRs

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Abstract

We performed an autopsy on a 3-month-old baby boy who had only one area severe and extensive wound to his head and face. Three unrelated miniature dachshunds were in the house. After our investigation, we were able to confirm that the wound had in fact been caused by a dog attack, and we were able to identify the offending dog among the three dogs using both human and canine short tandem repeat obtained from samples taken from the suspected dog and from the scene of the attack.

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Acknowledgment

The English used in this manuscript was revised by Miss K. Miller (Royal English Language Centre, Fukuoka, Japan).

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Correspondence to Noriaki Ikeda.

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Fig. S1

Bloody pool (a) containing small pieces of cardilaginous tissue which were recognized as the victim’s right ear (b) (DOC 275 kb)

Table S1

Canine STR loci and each repeat sequence and primer sequence for PCR (DOC 33 kb)

Table S2

Human DNA profiles from three samples obtained from the scene (DOC 41 kb)

Table S3

Allele frequency, gene frequency, likelihood ratio and probability of identity of canine STR profiles between the suspected dog and the pool of blood containing the victim’s ear (DOC 34 kb)

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Tsuji, A., Ishiko, A., Kimura, H. et al. Unusual death of a baby: a dog attack and confirmation using human and canine STRs. Int J Legal Med 122, 59–62 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00414-006-0150-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00414-006-0150-6

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