SOUTH KINGSTOWN, R.I. -- Two years after a financial crisis forced the Rhode Island State Crime Laboratory at the University of Rhode Island to stop its work on firearms, the laboratory is working through a backlog of hundreds of cases while, at the same time, receiving a record number of gun investigations from around the state, says lab director Dennis Hilliard.
As it studies the weapons, bullets and shell casings, the laboratory is discovering examples of how guns are being shared by criminals, a practice that's common knowledge to law enforcement.
For example, when the Pawtucket police arrested Brandon L. Dawkins, 30, in February and seized the gun he allegedly brandished at a Pawtucket barbershop customer, state firearms examiners linked the weapon to two homicides last year.