HENDERSONVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF) — In criminal investigations, the most important evidence is often hidden. That's where K-9 Stella comes in.
Stella is a 2-year-old dog who works with her handler, Detective Nicholas Edwards, at the Hendersonville Police Department. She is trained to locate phones, trackers, memory cards and hard drives in hard-to-find places.
"And that's where K-9 Stella comes in because she uses her nose to help us find the devices that someone may hide," Edwards said.
Digital evidence can be extremely small and easily overlooked, making Stella's abilities especially valuable to investigators.
"And so we have Stella who can use her nose to help us find these devices quicker and more efficiently," Edwards said.
In just a month at the department, Stella has already been deployed on real searches.
"She did find a cell phone and some other devices," Edwards said.
Unlike some trained police dogs, Stella does not bark or scratch when she finds a scent.
"So she's going to sit when she finds the target odor," Edwards said.
During search warrants, the Hendersonville Police Department can use Stella to help find electronic evidence in child pornography or stalking cases.
But Stella has another role as well.
"She's also trained in comfort training… help them with their stress level when they're having to tell a traumatic story," Edwards said.
Stella is part of a specialized program and partnership between the Hendersonville Police Department, the Secret Service and the National Computer Forensic Institute. That partnership aims to help improve how police departments locate and recover digital evidence.
Edwards said he sees Stella working with the department for at least the next decade, building cases on digital trails.
Want to see Stella in action? Watch the full video report above and see how this remarkable K-9 is changing the way Hendersonville police track down hidden digital evidence — from phones to hard drives. Have a story tip or know of another K-9 unit doing innovative work in our community? We want to hear from you. Reach out to reporter Kim Rafferty directly at kim.rafferty@NewsChannel5.com.
In this article, we used artificial intelligence to help us convert a video news report originally written by Kim Rafferty. When using this tool, both Kim and the NewsChannel 5 editorial team verified all the facts in the article to make sure it is fair and accurate before we published it. We care about your trust in us and where you get your news, and using this tool allows us to convert our news coverage into different formats so we can quickly reach you where you like to consume information. It also lets our journalists spend more time looking into your story ideas, listening to you and digging into the stories that matter.
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