Grieving mother pens book about her son's mysterious death in 2006
Adrienne Miranda has been fighting a lonely battle for "justice" since 2006, when her 19-year-old son, Joseph, was found crushed under an earthmover on a landscaping site in Baltimore County.
Miranda contends it was no accident, but murder and a cover-up by law enforcement. And although police and prosecutors said her son's death was accidental, Miranda took solace in 2011, when the state medical examiner's office ruled Joseph Miranda's death was a homicide and that he had "died at the hands of another," according to a detailed 2011 article in The Baltimore Sun about the ruling and the case.
But no one has ever been charged with a crime. Baltimore County State's Attorney Scott Shellenberger disputed the homicide ruling at the time and insisted that there would be no further inquiry into the young man's death. He told The Sun in an interview after the ruling, "The incident doesn't rise to the level of a crime."
Shellenberger told the Towson Times this week that nothing has changed and that he has had no conversations about the case since he last talked to The Sun in 2011.
Nonetheless, Adrienne Miranda has pressed on, crusading through the press and lobbying other law enforcement agencies to revisit the case. Now, she is promoting a self-published book she has written about the case, called "The Scent of My Son, In God We Trust," and has been doing signings at bookstores in the region, including an upcoming appearance at the Ukazoo store on Dulaney Valley Road in Towson, on Dec. 5 from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.
In the preface of her book, she writes that her son was "just starting to realize all of his hopes, dreams, ambitions and a promising future."
Miranda said she found a penny in her son's pocket when he died and now wears it on a pendant around her neck. The cover of the book is a close-up photo of the pendant in clouds, with a blue sky and a rainbow above.
"People need to know that this book has great meaning," she said, in a recent interview at her home in Lutherville. She also said she would never stop fighting for the prosecution of the person who killed her son.