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When a traumatic event involving blood, bodily fluids, or tissue occurs—such as a suicide in a home or public place—we provide professional cleanup services to help families and businesses restore their environments safely.
When a family or company experiences a trauma event, what that means is there has been an incident where blood, bodily fluids, and tissue are present inside a structure. It can be a home, a convenience store, or any place where people gather. Usually, in most cases, we are called to an individual home or apartment where a suicide has taken place.
The most significant number is that three-quarters of suicides take place in homes. The remaining choose different places such as vehicles, workplaces, or public places. Sometimes, they will choose a cliff, bridge, or train.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2023). Facts About Suicide. https://www.cdc.gov/suicide/facts/index.html
The other types of trauma work Crime Scene Cleaners in Kansas City are called to are Unattended death, Homicide, and Accidental death.
Unattended death is an incident when a person dies by heart attack, home accident, alcohol or drug overdose death and isn’t found for some time. The average time unattended is about two and one-half weeks.
In many cases, it only takes four days before we are needed, but the longer the body lies undiscovered, the greater the damage to the structure.
Homicide or Crime scene cleanup may not be as easy as the others mentioned above. If there’s a stabbing or bludgeoning, there’s a beginning point and an ending point to the surmise of the victim in between will have blood and bodily fluids flung from the ceiling to the floor as the victim is trying to protect themselves and perhaps fight back during the attack. The reason for the movement through the structure is the victim is trying to escape their attacker.
Every one of our trauma jobs has a sorrowful and challenging story attached to it, and we are very much aware of the emotional trauma a family or coworkers are experiencing. Our motto is
‘No one should be victimized twice.” The reason behind our work is that we understand and know the added significance of going into a scene and trying to clean up in the case of the death of a loved one.
We know we wouldn’t want to do that, and even with our experience, we would find another company to handle the work. When you see under our logo Care – Compassion – Peace of Mind, we believe that’s what we try to deliver to our clients; biohazard remediation is only a means to deliver that end.
While watching television, I see a commercial in which an older person has fallen and can’t get up. Because of that commercial, I usually do something to distract myself from watching it. It hits too close to reality for me to watch. As an older person, my friends and relatives can’t get up from a fall without help, even if they’re not injured. Maybe that’s why it hits close to home.
Case Study
One day, we received a call from a person from a large home. It was an older couple living alone. This was about the time when people could communicate via computer chat rooms. The wife went to bed earlier to read. The husband, a World War II Navy veteran, retired to the next bedroom to chat with his veteran buddies, who all served on the same ship. His wife told me he just loved talking to old friends.
The problem started earlier when the husband returned from Walmart with a new computer desk he had assembled. He was busy as usual, typing conversations with his buddies. His wife could hear him laughing sometimes from the other bedroom.
At about eleven O’clock, he started feeling light-headed and a little dizzy. As many of his friends were on the West Coast, he almost always talked until midnight. But that night, he signed off early and went to his bedroom. He walked over to his wife’s side of the bed and woke her up, telling her how he was feeling. She touched his forehead and said, “Hmm, you’re cold and clammy.” She turned on her lamp and headed to the bathroom to retrieve a thermometer. As she rounded the corner of the bed, she exclaimed, “Oh honey, you’re bleeding,” as she looked at a trail of blood that led over to the other bedroom.
They started examining him and found that somehow he had cut his foot right behind the ankle. He was on blood thinners, so he was bleeding heavily. She ran to the bathroom to retrieve a couple of bath towels, and he called 911.
They could not get the bleeding under control, and they knew an ambulance would be arriving soon. “The front door is locked,” he exclaimed, so she ran to open it. He was hobbling toward the front door down the hall as she returned to him. He was getting too weak to walk, so she helped him to the foyer. As they stepped to the foyer, it was ceramic tile, and with him bleeding so badly, it became slick in a hurry, and they both fell into the carpeted front room.
The following day, she returned home with their daughter to get a few things and allow her to bathe and redress from the night before.
When they both walked into the house, they almost fainted at the sight of all the blood. His daughter remarked, “There’s so much blood I don’t know how daddy is still alive.” They did some investigation on their own and found that while putting the desk together, her husband allowed a sharp pointed wood screw to penetrate through to the inside of the stand. It just happened to be at the right height to cut his foot. With his neuropathy, he didn’t feel his foot being cut.
He survived the incident, but we were called to clean up the mess. The carpet had to be pulled and replaced in two large bedrooms, the hall and the front room. We also had to pull the ceramic tile in the foyer because blood went underneath from cracks between the tile and grout. Fortunately, in most cases, property insurance pays for our work, which was paid for through their insurance provider, less the deductible.
[We’ve seen this scenario play out before. The saphenous vein behind the ankle is close enough to the skin to be easily cut. An invalid man cut his vein with a toenail that was allowed to grow too long by a caretaker. It wasn’t until he lost enough blood that he felt something wet in his bed by his lower leg.]
Crime Scene Cleaners, LLC, founded in 1999, is based in Kansas City, Missouri. Our service area covers Missouri and Kansas, making it the Midwest’s oldest and most prominent company. You might ask why we cover so much real estate.
The reason is that the large cities provide enough work to support several companies. Still, there’s not enough work in rural America to support a stand-alone company specializing in crime and trauma scene cleanup. Most stand-alone companies don’t want to bother with marketing and what it takes to make themselves known to rural America. A carpet cleaner or a disaster restoration company may do the work. But this work is a fill-in for them, and they usually have unskilled workers.
Crime Scene Cleaners is the oldest company in the Midwest, established in 1999. Over the years, we have changed our approach to industry best practices and have been innovators in those practices.
If other companies who make their living doing other work are busy with their primary services, they often can’t serve someone in need now. Other times, they’ve given up on trying to do the work for many reasons, mainly skilled help.
We serve such a large area because it goes back to our motto. We don’t want to see anyone victimized twice.
If you are in need or know someone who is, please let them know they don’t have to search forever for someone qualified to do the work.
We are available 24/7/365 days. You can reach us by calling 816-808-7642 or 913-808-7642 or Toll-Free anywhere in Kansas or Missouri at 800-909-2939
Written by Don M. McNulty © 2024 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED This article may be published with the following citation.
“As originally published by Don M. McNulty, Trauma Cleaning, Crime Scene Cleaners Blog, 2024
