Shanice Crews disappeared on July 6, 2021. Years passed without any word about the 28-year-old missing mother of two. In April 2024, officers with the NYPD called Shanita Hopkins, Crews’ sister, with devastating news.
They found Shanice’s body in February. A toxicology report found high levels of cocaine in her bloodstream and labeled her cause of death as a drug overdose.
Due to the level of decomposition, Hopkins and her family could not identify the body. The New York Medical Examiner confirmed the body as Crews, saying dental records matched.
Hopkins felt the results did not match what she knew about her sister, although said, “Reading the autopsy was traumatic.” Even still, she held a service for Crews before cremating her body and mixing the ashes with their deceased mothers.
She mourned the loss of her sister.
In November 2024, Hopkins’ life was again turned upside down when a stranger from Detroit, MI, whom she had never met, texted her a photograph with a message reading, “Ma’am I’m concerned your sister is not dead. She just volunteered at my event today.”
The message and photo threw Hopkins for a loop. She identified the woman as her sister, Shanica Crews.
She just buried her sister. How could this be?
Hopkins contacted the man, then the police. The Monroe County Medical Examiner’s Office then confirmed that dental records from the deceased individual matched Crews.
Unsatisfied with the response, Hopkins opted to compare her DNA to the ashes given to her. Tests confirmed what she had suspected all along: the person she had buried months earlier was not her sister. DNA did not match.
Hopkins has not yet spoken to her sister, but hopes she’ll reach out to her. Meanwhile, she says the Medical Examiner’s Office offered to reimburse her for the costs of cremation, but she has reached out to an attorney.
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