Every year tens of thousands of people, or more, go to a podiatrist for help with foot pain. It has been estimated that the typical person in the United States takes somewhere between four and six thousand steps every day. By the time a person reaches the age of 50, they have traveled about 75,000 miles by foot. This could be one reason so many Google “podiatrist near me,” need help from bunion surgeons, or suffer from ankle pain.
Now you can add crime solving to the list of things podiatrists can do. If you are asking, “is there a podiatrist near me?” you may have to check the police station. In Wayne County, Tennessee, Dr. Michael Nirenberg helped crack the case of a beer robbery using forensic podiatry, this is the first time this field has been used to arrest someone in the United States. Patch has reported on the case.andnbsp;
This all started with a stick up at a beer store in the tiny community of Cypress Inn, Tennesee. Three men walked into Berry’s Package Store on January 4, 2017. The town of Cypress Inn is a small town that is not even incorporated. It sits by the Natchez Trace Parkway. The area can be found a little north of the border with Alabama and is roughly 120 miles away from Nashville.
One of the robbers took a gun and used it to hit the owner of the store. They then robbed the place. The entire event took approximately 98 seconds from start to finish.
The robbers were clad in masks and gloves so their image was not taken and no DNA or fingerprints were left at the scene. None of the people present for the robbery could see the faces of the perpetrators.
When police investigators looked over the footage from the security system, one did make an observation that would prove to be the key to solving the case. One of the men had what the officer described as a “distinctive walk.” It looked a lot like the way a customer to the store had walked. The customer in question had been in the store the very day before the robbery occurred, according to a report Wayne County Sheriff Ric Wilson gave to WKRN.
Some of Wilson’s staff had read about a new technique for solving crimes that was being made available to police around the country. This is called “gait analysis.” This is another forensic tool that can be used to catch criminals. While it is not used here, it has been used in England successfully. This is where Dr. Nirenberg came into the picture.
Nirenberg, now the most sought-after person when asking for a “podiatrist near me” for the people in who live near him, is not from Tennessee. He lives in Indiana where he has won the “Best Podiatrist in Northwest Indiana” eight times. He has been a paid expert witness in malpractice and personal injury cases. He has even analyzed footprints at crime scenes. He had never been asked to do something like this.
The police got Nirenberg the video they had and asked him to look it over. He reviewed the tape from the time of the crime and the tape of the customer they suspected was the one with the unusual gait. He said he was sure the customer on the tape and the thief on the tape were the same person. He said he had “100%” certainty of this.
For District Attorney Brent Cooper, this was a gamble but he decided to go for it and show the evidence to the court and see if they would accept Nirenberg’s report as real evidence, he told the local FOX station.
The thief, Quinton Nance, was hauled in by police and informed that they caught him because of his gait. When confronted with this information, Nance fessed up. He turned on the other two men involved in the crime. They are Jesse Armstead and Corey Fuqua. The trio were all arrested and placed in the Wayne County Jail. Their bonds have been set at $500,000.
Many people find themselves searching online for “a podiatrist near me” but are not looking for a detective, just someone to help with their foot pain.
