Robert Shawn Yao — Direct

ROBERT SHAWN YAO: My name is Robert Shawn Yao. The S-H-A-W-N.

ROBERT SHAWN YAO: I am the current forensic supervisor at the Tallahassee Police Department.

ROBERT SHAWN YAO: Currently, as a forensic supervisor, I perform the day-to-day operations of the unit, ensuring that there are forensic specialists available to respond to requests for assistance for crime scene processing or forensic examinations for the City of Tallahassee. I also respond when needed to go ahead and assist and help process scenes, or to offer any kind of advice or assistance to my forensic specialists on the scene.

ROBERT SHAWN YAO: I've been with TPD for almost six years. I started in November of 2013.

ROBERT SHAWN YAO: Prior to that, I was a senior crime laboratory analyst in the crime scene section of the Tallahassee Regional Operations Center Crime Laboratory at the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.

ROBERT SHAWN YAO: I did that for 19 years.

ROBERT SHAWN YAO: I have a bachelor of science degree in microbiology from Auburn University. I have a bachelor of science degree in criminology from the Florida State University, and I have a master's in criminal justice administration from Southern Columbia University. At FDLE, upon hiring, I went through a very rigorous training program to prepare me for the collection, preservation, and collection of physical evidence with regards to the various forensic disciplines that FDLE has.

ROBERT SHAWN YAO: This is training in the collection, recognition, and preservation of things like latent prints, firearms, DNA, toxicology, computer evidence recovery, and a variety of other more specialized trainings to enable me to do what's known as crime scene analysis, or forensic crime scene analysis, which is what my certification is in.

ROBERT SHAWN YAO: Trained in the documentation and collection of forensic entomology evidence, which is insect evidence; forensic archaeology and anthropology, the recovery of buried bodies, buried remains, and surface skeletal remains; bloodstain pattern analysis; trajectory analysis; hazardous weapons and weapons of mass destruction; responses to scenes for hazardous materials, environment, and a variety of other training. The training takes, for primary, takes about a year.

ROBERT SHAWN YAO: Textbook learnings, practical examinations, as well as going to specialty courses, and then going through a supervised casework period where I made the decisions and processed the scene under the supervision of a certified analyst. At the end of about a year, you're certified to respond and perform independent casework as a crime scene analyst with FDLE. And then the training after that is continuous from there on throughout your entire career.

ROBERT SHAWN YAO: There are two forms that we utilized in my training. One is bullet path documentation — bullet path documentation is the proper form and technique to document how bullets pass through objects and where they go — in order to do a trajectory analysis, which allows an examiner to take the documentation and the evidence that I preserved and determine the most probable point of origin of the projectile, where it originated, based upon its terminus as well as other items of physical evidence that were present at the scene.

ROBERT SHAWN YAO: No, I did not.

ROBERT SHAWN YAO: Yes, I did.

ROBERT SHAWN YAO: I was present on scene at the time of the primary processing. I also reviewed forensic specialist Joanne Maltese's report, as well as the medical examiner report. I took a look at the photographs that FS Maltese took, as well as the sketches that she created in conjunction with her examination.

ROBERT SHAWN YAO: Not in the analysis per se, to determine the point of origin, but in bullet path documentation and evaluation of those bullet paths.

ROBERT SHAWN YAO: There's something I want to report.

ROBERT SHAWN YAO: In looking, and based upon the deposition testimony I gave previously, I took a look at the medical examiner's report, because I had never seen the deceased, nor the injuries, nor a report on what type of injuries they had.

ROBERT SHAWN YAO: During the deposition, I testified that based upon the height of the projectile hole in the window, that it would be consistent with both a short as well as a tall shooter. So in looking at the injuries to the deceased, and in assuming things that were brought forth in the deposition — assuming that the individual is firing in a normal manner, rather than in some weird manner of holding the firearm, a normal extended-arm shot into the window, and assuming that the deceased was sitting in an upright position and looking out the window or looking toward the shooter at the time the shot was fired — using those assumptions, based upon the evidence that is present, what I was able to see, the injury and the hole in the window is more consistent with somebody of a taller stature, being six foot or higher or close to six foot, rather than somebody being short.

ROBERT SHAWN YAO: The height of the hole that's in the window is approximately 49 inches from the floor of the garage. If you look at a standard six-foot-one person, their approximate shoulder height is somewhere around 58 inches, if you just as a standard or as a general rule of thumb, or if you measure somebody approximately that height. Somebody about five foot four is going to be significantly shorter. If somebody fires in a normal course of manner with the arm extended with a pistol, somebody this short, where their arm, shoulder height, is approximately 48 inches or 49 inches from the ground, is going to have a more direct or parallel line to where the hole is in the window, versus somebody that's taller — it's going to be more of a downward angle. The initial projectile strike that goes into the deceased strikes the left cheek. It's a slightly downward angle from right to left, where the projectile ends up behind the left ear. There is pseudo-stippling around the injury, which is consistent with the breaking of the window. So because of the downward angle, if you assume that the person is sitting upright at the time the shot was fired, connected to the hole in the window, it is more consistent with somebody being taller firing at a downward angle into the passenger compartment, rather than a shorter person firing it where it would be almost parallel.

ROBERT SHAWN YAO: That strike would have been more straight across and into the deceased, rather than at a downward angle into the deceased.