Elk Grove Police Hope Advancements In DNA, Genealogy Technology Will Crack Cold Case
ELK GROVE (CBS13) — The Elk Grove Police Department has a hunch that advancements in new genealogy and DNA technology can help find clues in a cold case investigators could not find more than eight years ago.
"It's time to take a fresh look at this brutal crime that occurred," Elk Grove Police Chief Timothy Albright said.
The chief told CBS13 the department is giving the case a fresh look with hopes of possibly finding DNA on existing evidence and using genealogy technology to find a suspect.
In March 2011, Gurmej Atwal and Surinder Singh were shot on their afternoon stroll on East Stockton Boulevard and Geneva Point Drive. Singh died at the scene while Atwal passed six weeks later.
Kamaljit Atwal, Gurmej's son, hopes the new science now coming into play will answer his family's prayers to catch his father's killer.
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"Since then, now technology has been much more upgraded or more advanced so they're going to use it to the extent," Atwal said.
"Certainly DNA and the advances in DNA processing plays a huge role in law enforcement's ability to solve some of those cold cases," Albright said.
The chief told CBS13 these advancements and updated databases can help detectives access information that they didn't have in the past.
"The opportunity to be run through various databases, various techniques to be able to just see if that eight and a half years produces is something that eight and a half years ago we wouldn't have the technology for," Albright said.
Atwal said he's confident a fresh look at his father's case can bring his family long-awaited justice.
"Justice will be served and the case will be closed but my father's not gonna come back. No one can. Once you lose it it's gone," Atwal said.
Albright said the department will also use public genealogy databases such as Ancestry.com to find possible suspects if the department is able to find DNA samples on existing evidence.