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The Elderly Witness can Sometimes be an Unreliable Witness

Posted on June 19th, 2018

Senior Citizen looks to be an unreliable accident witnesses for private investigatorKrofina Investigations had a recent case wherein one of the witnesses was a 90-year-old woman.

She gave her name and contact telephone number to our client at the scene but the information was not on the police report because she left before the police arrived.

One of our investigative assignments was to interview her and take a witness’ statement.

We first went over the police report to familiarize ourselves with the accident. It involved a motorcycle entering an intersection and colliding with a vehicle turning left. There were no signals or stop signs at the intersection and the cyclist should have had the right-of-way.

Our elderly witness first stated that she had clearly seen the accident. About half-way through the statement, she changed her mind and decided that she hadn’t actually seen the accident but had merely heard the sounds of the collision.

She first had the motorcyclist turning right and then turning left. After that, she had the motorcyclist on the same side of the intersection as the car that collided with it. According to her, they were both trying to complete a left turn from the same lane and at the same time.

Thankfully, we had other witnesses to interview. They had seen things in line with what the police report said so we submitted the elderly person’s statement as bullet points and noted that she was very confused. This is how a private investigator can handle and support the witness statement from an elderly person.

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