Who Cares About “Cold Cases"

Who cares about “Cold cases?” The people of the loved ones who have been murdered are the folk who are about cold cases getting solved. It’s about closure so the family can try and move forward.

- Thera Martin

Allow me to introduce you to a woman by the name of Keyna Drinks. She is the founder of a nonprofit called Still Waiting On Justice Advocates (SWOJA). SWOJA was created to assist families who have lost loved ones to violence, where the case has not yet been solved, and it becomes known as a “cold case.” Keyna Drinks lost her husband to violence.

Keyna tells her story, “Unfortunately, my husband, Kevin Drinks, was killed in Philadelphia in December 2011. We had no idea why he was killed. He was literally assassinated outside on the sidewalk in front of his job at the end of his shift. We didn’t find out why he was murdered until 2017. The case had really gone cold, and the whole situation was driving me crazy. I know what kind of man that I married. Kevin was a man of God. My husband was always the peacemaker in the family. If anybody ever had any arguments or misunderstandings, he was always the one to try and create peace. Ultimately, what we found out about his murder years later was that my husband's demise was because of mistaken identity.”

Keyna Drinks went on to explain, “My husband was killed because some young men thought that he was going to be a witness in the case of one of their friends who was in serious trouble, another murder case. The young men who stole my husband’s life from him had literally got a description of who they were supposed to kill from a telephone call and then proceeded to assassinate the wrong person, my husband. For all those years, I didn’t have a clue as to why my husband was killed, and so I couldn’t rest. The tenacity in me made me just want to start being out there on my own, doing what I could do, to try and push things along, to get my husband’s cold case solved.