Results: To Catch A Thief

Most children's drawings might make it to the fridge door or classroom wall. But one nine-year-old's drawing could end up helping the police find the suspects behind a series of package thefts. Last week, police officers in Springville, Utah were canvassing the area looking for a vehicle that was spotted following a mail truck and stealing the packages it left behind. Officers found a little girl who had seen the suspicious red pickup truck and they asked her to draw what she'd seen. In a Facebook post on Sunday, the Police wrote that her "very well drawn" picture of the truck led to officers finding a match in one of the area's surveillance cameras. Did you ever think a child's drawing could be good enough to help in this kind of case?

This hand-drawn sketch was put together using basic witness details but proved to be just enough to jog the memory of police who went on to identify the suspect in a Pennsylvania robbery. An eyewitness went on to identify the suspect from the same sketch. Do you think this sketch looks like the suspect in question?

It has been proven that people in general do not make good eye witnesses. Although witnesses can often be very confident that their memory is accurate when identifying a suspect, the malleable nature of human memory and visual perception makes eyewitness testimony one of the most unreliable forms of evidence. Have you ever been an eye witness in a crime of any kind?