The Lewis family is still grieving, searching for closure, because they don’t understand why police shot and killed Daniel Lewis as he stood on his back porch on May 31.
“I watched my son take his last breath, and that’s the hardest thing a mother could ever do, from the first to the last,” said Angela Lewis, Daniel’s mother, at a news conference Tuesday. “Nobody will understand what was taken from us, and all we want to know is why, why, why did it have to happen?”
“The answer to her question, 'Why did this have to happen?' is it did not have to happen, it absolutely did not have to happen, Mr. Lewis should still be here today,” said Chris Lomax, an attorney representing the family in a forthcoming lawsuit against the Miami Gardens Police Department and the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms.
Those agencies were working together in a task force to combat gun violence.
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Lewis was 27, the son of a retired New York City Police officer. He had two young kids, no criminal record, and a permit to carry a gun. On that night in May, he was at home. His cousins were in a car being followed, they say, by an unmarked black car that had no police lights or sirens. They panicked and drove into their backyard to get away from what they thought were gang members. Lewis came outside to see what was going on and that’s when he was shot.
“Not once did anyone yell police, stop, police, freeze, instead what they did was they gunned down a law-abiding citizen in his backyard, on his back doorstep, without a warning,” said attorney Ariel Lett.
On the night of the incident, the special agent in charge of the ATF office in Miami, Christopher Robinson, said, “Unfortunately, some individuals discharged firearms at some Miami Gardens detectives as well as some of my agents, gunfire was returned, one individual struck and he’s unfortunately deceased.”
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“What was the rush, what was the urgency to fire upon Mr. Lewis on this night? There was none, this was a bad shoot, it shouldn’t have happened,” Lomax said.
NBC6 reached out to both agencies for comment Tuesday. Miami Gardens Police have not responded while ATF told us they can’t comment because they’re still investigating.
The Lewis family attorneys say he did have his gun on him when he died, but none of the shells found at the scene came from his gun. If he pointed the gun at police, that would be enough of a threat for officers to fire at him. We don’t know if that happened, or if Lewis had any idea that they were police.
