'Ballistics saved my life:' Macon man's murder charges dropped after investigation
A match in the National Integrated Ballistics Information Network database pinned a 2016 Macon murder on someone else.
"If it wasn't for the technology, then I wouldn't have ever been believed"
At the Bibb County Crime Lab, Antonio Lewis-Ross spends hours every day looking at shell casings.
"Each individual gun leaves different marks," says Lewis-Ross. "One crime scene could have one shell casing, another could have 300."
After first glance, the casings get put into this a new machine at the crime lab and uploaded into the National Integrated Ballistics Information Network (NIBIN).
The Bibb County Sheriff's Office received the new NIBIN machine in July as part of a $200,000 grant from the US Department of Justice.
The machine generates a "grade," then investigators determine if it's a match to a shell casing already in the database.
"What we're able to do is take shell casings that are collected at crime scenes-- or shell casings that are discharged from the test fire of seized fire arms-- and make connections very quickly," says Lt. Jason Batchelor with the Bibb Criminal Intelligence Unit.
The latter is essentially what saved a Bibb County man from spending his life in a jail cell.
In 2016, investigators found Kendra Roberts body shot multiple times near her apartment complex on Riverside Drive. Hours later, they charged her boyfriend, Daniel Hall, with her death.
"If it wasn't for the technology, then I wouldn't have ever been believed," says Hall.
Hall sat in jail for months, until the Clarkston Police Department, outside of Atlanta, arrested a second man in connection to Roberts' death, Sterling Bell.
"I have never seen that man a day in my life. So, like, I don't even know where he came into the picture at," says Hall.
In October 2018, more than two years after Roberts' death, Clarkston Police fired a gun sitting in their evidence room.They put the shell casings in the NIBIN machine, and the "ballistic fingerprint" matched the weapon used to kill Kendra Roberts.
The gun belonged to Sterling Bell.
"You go from think you're not going to come home, ever... to getting out! I mean of course you're going to be happy, but you're not happy about the situation itself," says Hall.
The Macon District attorney's office confirms Hall's charges were dropped. But, Hall says the months that followed were "rough."
Since then, he's moved away from Macon to start over. Now, he has a new job and a new son.
"I'm trying to show my son a different aspect of life. I'm trying to basically make a better man out of him," says Hall.
Since the installation of the NIBIN machine in Bibb County, Lt. Batchelor says the criminal intelligence unit has made over 80 connections between firearms used in local crimes.
"We can more effectively recover evidence, target those that are responsible, and go after the trigger-pullers. Those that are driving our gun crimes," says Lt. Batchelor.
"Ballistics saved me, they saved my life... and I thank god for it," says Hall.
The Macon District Attorney's Office says Sterling Bell's case is pending trial.
Statement from Kendra Roberts' father:
“I always asked God to reveal who would kill my daughter and why? Today I am relieved to know that he is behind bars. I never gave up, but kept the faith.”
Willie Roberts
A closer look at other cases solved with NIBIN technology
The NIBIN technology has helped solve crimes all over the nation, like Darrell Siggers who spent 34 years in jail before bullet ballistic testing proved him innocent.
Siggers was accused of shooting 25-year-old James Montgomery in Detroit, Michigan back in February 1984.
The National Registry of Exonerations reports then 20-year old Siggers was accused by two of Montgomery’s friends.
The duo told investigators they had seen Siggers that night at a party, before they both got kicked out with Montgomery.
On February 22, 1984, Siggers was arrested and charged with first-degree murder.
The registry reports Detroit Police Sgt. Claude Houseworth, a ballistics analyst, testified that seven shell casings found at the scene had been fired from the same weapon — likely a rifle.
The murder weapon was never recovered.
In 2008, the Detroit police crime lab was shut down because of widespread errors in their ballistics testing.
David Balash, a retired Michigan State Police firearms examiner, reviewed the ballistics evidence and found the original testimony was at times “totally inaccurate.”
On August 30, 2018, Siggers was released after decades in prison.
In Columbia, South Carolina, bullet ballistics helped officers put away a man for an unsolved shootout in 2017.
According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in South Carolina, 30-year-old Wilbert Green Junior was arrested and sentenced to four years in federal prison April 13, 2018.
Columbia police officers arrested Green and found a loaded Hi-point 9mm gun.
They used bullet ballistics through the National Integrated Ballistic Information Network to link the gun with an unsolved 2017 shootout.
NIBIN Interactive Map
ATF has worked to place the NIBIN program in strategic locations of the country with the goal of giving investigators an edge in the fight against firearms related violence.
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