Shondiin Silversmith
Arizona Mirror
Rosalie Nez traveled more than four hours from Coal Mine Canyon, on the Navajo Nation, to the Phoenix area in hopes of getting answers to what happened to her brother Emerson Nez, who she says died in a fraudulent sober living home in 2022.
“Emerson was on his way to recovery,” she said.
Nez shared her story during a town hall meeting hosted Tuesday night by the advocacy group StolenPeopleStolenBenefits about the fraudulent sober living home crisis.
Nez said she attended in hopes of connecting with anyone who may have known Emerson or heard anything about his death. She said the family didn’t know he had died until about six weeks later, when a police officer delivered the news at her sister’s home in Tuba City.
“To this day, we’re still trying to figure out what had happened in the facility that he was at,” Nez said. When the family got her brother’s personal belongings back, his clothes were covered in blood, and they have no idea how that happened.