The public's fascination with C.S.I., or crime scene investigation, is growing. And Friday night, Mountain State University helped feed the public's appetite for clues about solving crime.

M.S.U. transformed part of Crossroads Mall in Raleigh County into a mock crime scene to see what happens after someone is murdered. Joe Ward from Nicholas County walked by and thought someone had actually been killed. "At first, I did. When I first saw it, I thought, and I saw people just standing around, and I knew it wasn't really anything."

M.S.U. forensics students showed the public how crime scene investigators do their job.

"We actually get out in the field, and we get called on police work. If they need us, we'll go and actually get to work on cases, and we do stuff like that," said Chelsea Westfall, an M.S.U. sophomore from Braxton County.

It's the crime scene investigator's job to preserve the evidence, document it through notes and photos, and recreate the scene for the jury, when the case goes to trial. "They are actually demanding that the scene be processed more meticulously and accurately and that the facts actually are proven to put the bad person away," said Roger Teets, director of M.S.U.'s forensics program.

Many mall shoppers were impressed with what they saw. "They can take a little something and make a whole lot of it. A little piece of anything can solve a crime with it," said Joe Ward.