The body was sprawled on the weight bench as crime scene investigators walked around it to gather evidence.

Then it moved – and smiled.

“You’re supposed to be dead,” Julie Battaglia reminded Aundre Allen, a Central Junior High School ninth-grader.

“Sorry,” Aundre told his teacher, stifling a laugh before returning to his role.

Aundre was playing one of five crime victims Thursday in the annual “CSI” science event at the school.

Like investigators in TV’s “CSI” dramas, 35 advanced biology students gathered pieces of evidence and then analyzed them to help solve crimes.

Battaglia said her class broke into teams that were each assigned to one of the five murder scenes in the school’s auditorium.

At Aundre’s death scene, investigators found him on his back on a weight bench.

A barbell was propped up next to him with one end on the floor and one end leaning against the weight bench. Next to the bench was a stool with a hand-written note.

“They’re trying to find out who the killer was,” Battaglia said.

Several students were dusting for fingerprints and looking for hair samples from the scene.

Brand Willis, who was wearing white plastic gloves, was inking the fingers of Aundre’s right hand and carefully pressing them onto a fingerprint sheet.

Leanne Milleret was checking on other evidence.

“So far, we know he had a note on a stool with a workout plan. At the bottom it said, ‘Hit in head with dumbbell,’ like it would be a suicide. We’re not sure yet,” Leanne said.

She said her CSI team also had taken photos and drawn a diagram of the scene.

“We found a hair in his hand,” said Martha Allen, another team member. “Now we’re trying to get matches.”

Five “suspects” were brought into the auditorium. Students fingerprinted them and took hair and handwriting samples.

“One may have done more than one crime. They don’t really know what they’re getting into,” said Don Hicks, a Lawrence police officer who serves as the school’s resource officer.

For the past two weeks, students have been learning about detective work, Hicks said.

Martha said her team’s investigation hasn’t been quite like those on TV.

“It’s a lot slower,” she said. “They have all the high-tech equipment, which doesn’t exist.”

Battaglia said the students would check the fingerprints and handwriting found at the scenes to see if they matched the suspects’.

“The kids look forward to this. That’s one of the reasons why they want to take advanced biology,” she said. “With all the ‘CSI’ on TV they want to do this.”

Joel Bonner was in charge of collecting the evidence for his team from the crime scene.

“It’s a really nice change of pace from classroom work,” the ninth-grader said. “It’s nice to have a hands-on project where we can go out, do it ourselves and have fun, all at the same time.”

So, did they catch the crooks? The results couldn’t be revealed because another class will be investigating the same crimes today.