- "So much investigating on my part, so much that was not told to me, that I found out on my own."
- The family of Uriah Joseph, the man who lost his life in a 2014 homicide, is speaking out about the challenges of navigating the criminal justice system.
Follow the story: Homicide case dismissed after 10 years
BROADCAST TRANSCRIPT:
"I still ask myself...did this really happen?"
On March 10, 2014, Frances Lewis was running your everyday errands when she received the call that her son had been shot.
"This policeman gets on the phone and speaks with me and he tells me...I asked you know, if it was real. He actually told me that he got shot in the head."
On March 10, 2014, her son, then 24-year-old Uriah Joseph, was shot and killed by New Iberia man named Michael Augustine. Lewis says she immediately tried to contact former-District Attorney, Robert Vines.
"He never even bothered to call," said Lewis. "So much investigating on my part, so much that was not told to me, I found out on my own."
According to Lewis, she left "multiple messages with [Vines's] secretary, and visited the Iberia Parish Courthouse multiple times," hoping to find any information about the man who killed her son.
Now, nearly a decade after Joseph's death, Lewis was told that the case had been dismissed 'due to lack of evidence.'
"It's not fair...Why was Uriah there? And if he was there it was only a matter of minutes. He was talking on the phone with me, she said he stopped by the house. The time of death from the time it happened, you know...matter of minutes."
So for now, the Joseph family continues carrying on his legacy by fighting for justice.
"We're his family," said Andrea Joseph, one of Uriah's six sisters. "We're going to carry on his name, we're going to keep fighting for him, because he can't."
