‘Your Sister Is Not Dead’: Family Stunned to Learn Woman They Mourned Is Alive in Another State

A missing woman from New York who was thought to be dead was found living in another state.

WROC, a Rochester CBS station, says that Shanice Crews’ family was told that their loved one had been found dead in the spring of 2024. A drug overdose is what the Monroe County Medical Examiner’s Office says caused the death. The police told Crews’ family that they thought she had died in February of that year. Her ashes were cremated and mixed with those of the family mother. The ashes of the two women were then given to different family members in the form of jewelry so that they could carry the ashes of their loved ones with them.

Shanice Crews, on the other hand, was alive and living in Michigan.

Crews’ sister Shanita Hopkins, whose age was not given, told WROC about the strange story and called them to her house, where she kept an urn that she thought held her sister’s ashes.

Hopkins told the station that she got a text message from a woman she didn’t know months after her family held a funeral service for Crews. It had a picture of a woman I knew and said, “Ma’am, I’m worried that your sister is not dead.” She just helped out at my event today.

Hopkins said that the woman’s name was Shanice Crews. She told WROC that she called the cops right away and they told her to go to the medical examiner’s office. The police tried to comfort Hopkins that the dental records from the body they thought was Crews’ were a match, but Hopkins wasn’t sure. The next step was to compare DNA.

He said, “They wanted my youngest sister because she and Shanice share the same parents. Then they wanted her son.” “They each went and did a DNA test, and when the results came back, they said it wasn’t a match for the body.”

Then there were even more questions. He told WROC, “We took care of the ashes and other things.” We put them in chains and mixed my mom up with this other person.

In an email to WROC, the Monroe County Medical Examiner said they “couldn’t comment on specific cases.” Hopkins said that since then, the office has taken back the ashes that were thought to belong to Crews.

WROC said that neither they nor Crews’ family have been able to get in touch with their lost loved one since July 2021, when they reported her missing. She told WROC that she would tell her sister “I love her” if she could talk to her.

“I’ve been mad for…,” she said. I’m still mad. I think the anger will never go away, but I understand how you feel… I fully understand how it feels to believe she is no longer alive. I want her to know that. It doesn’t matter what we were going through, I just want her to know that. Just saying, “I love her” That’s all I want her to know.

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