ROCHESTER, N.Y. (WROC) – A New York family is navigating an emotional journey after learning their loved one, whom officials declared dead last year, is actually alive and living out of state.
Shanita Hopkins reached out to NewsNation affiliate WROC with a very unusual situation. Her family had filed a missing person’s report for her sister, Shanice Crews, in July 2021. They were concerned because she left two children behind and cut off all communication.
In April 2024, police told the family their sister had died two months prior, in February, in an empty lot in Rochester, New York. The cause of death, according to the autopsy report, was a drug overdose with extremely high levels of cocaine in the body. Despite her sister being missing for three years at this point, Hopkins said cocaine wasn’t something she had been involved with.
“Reading the autopsy was traumatic. … It’s one thing to hear it, you know what I’m saying, but then it’s another thing to actually read it, and then her name is attached to it. So we’re thinking, this is how she died. And then we’re trying to think, did somebody, like, lace her? … It’s so much that goes into it. Your mind just goes crazy,” Hopkins said.
Hopkins said no one was allowed to view the body due to how badly it was decomposed, which prompted a swift cremation. The family held a memorial service and funeral for Crews last summer.
Then in November 2024, Hopkins received a shocking text message from a person she did not know from Detroit, accompanied by a photo of her sister, alive and well.
“Her first message is ‘Ma’am … I’m concerned. Your sister is not dead. She just volunteered at my event today.'”
“My initial reaction was like, ‘What the … what?'” Hopkins remembered. “‘What am I reading right now?!'”
Hopkins connected with police, who told her to go to the Monroe County Medical Examiner’s Office, where they assured her dental records were a match. Hopkins was not convinced, and showed the pictures and messages to personnel at the Medical Examiner’s Office. An investigation was soon underway.
“We went the next day. They wanted my youngest sister, because her and Shanice has the same mom and dad, and then they wanted her son. So both of them went and they did a DNA test, and when the results came back, they said it wasn’t a match,” Hopkins said.
This ultimately confirmed that the remains were not those of Crews. Hopkins told WROC that her family has been experiencing a range of emotions.
“We dealt with the ashes and stuff — we put them in necklaces and we mixed my mom with this stranger,” Hopkins said.
“That’s stuff that we still have to relive, because at the end of the day, it happened. You can’t take back the moments where the cop came and told us Shanice Crews has been found dead outside, like trash. You can’t take away them initial feelings, you know, like we can’t get that back. We can’t get them seven months back. We can’t get them tears back,” she continued.
In a response to inquiries about the situation, a representative for Monroe County provided the following statement:
“The Monroe County Office of the Medical Examiner uses industry standard scientific methods to identify remains of deceased individuals in a timely manner and make appropriate notifications to families. Due to restrictions on the disclosure of information contained in the records of the Office of the Medical Examiner, we are unable to comment on specific cases.”
Hopkins and her family are now seeking legal representation.
“I almost feel like they just, they couldn’t find out who this [deceased person] was and they wanted to close a missing person’s case. That’s almost how I feel,” Hopkins said, noting that the Medical Examiner’s Office has since retrieved this person’s ashes, which had been in a purple urn next to their mother.
“[The Medical Examiner’s Office] did say that, you know, ‘We can compensate you for everything that you all spent on the memorial and the cremation and stuff,’ but my family was like, no, we need to get a lawyer. If it’s for anything, it’s just really for pain and suffering, because this is crazy,” Hopkins said.
“She’s just still a missing person to us, but she’s alive and well,” Hopkins said.
The family reached out to the Detroit Police Department to attempt to track down Crews. Hopkins noted that her sister may not even know they all truly believed her to be dead.
When asked what she would say to her sister right now, Hopkins said: “I love her. I’ve been angry for … I’m still angry. I don’t think I’m ever gonna get over the anger, but I know how it feels — I’m sorry — I know how it feels to think that she was dead and that, I just want her to know that. I just want her to know that whatever we had going on, it doesn’t even matter. Like, I love her, that’s it. That’s all I would want her to know.”
WROC also reached out to the Detroit Police Department to inquire about the status of the agency’s attempts to locate Crews. Monroe County did not address the inquiry as to the identity of the remains given to Hopkins and her family.