Family: Twin is innocent in his brother’s murder

Authorities say the twin did take part in the crimes.

COLUMBUS (AP) — The death of Dennis Lewis was shocking enough: The National Honor Society student and marching band member was shot in his bedroom while masked robbers held a gun on his mother in another room.

Then police arrested his identical twin, an advanced placement student also active in the high school band. Authorities accuse Derris Lewis of taking part in the crimes.

Police based their arrest on a bloody palm print belonging to Derris, found in the bedroom where Dennis fought with his attacker.

The family, crushed by the death of one twin, is adamant the other is innocent.

“There’s no way, shape or form that my brother was even in that house,” said the boys’ older sister, Diane Lewis, who lives two doors down from where the shooting happened. “He would never put my mom in harm’s way whatsoever — she didn’t raise killers or criminals.”

Derris — the younger twin by 22 seconds — is charged in juvenile court with being an accomplice to aggravated murder, aggravated robbery and kidnapping. Because he turned 18 two weeks after the shooting, prosecutors are seeking to have him charged as an adult.

Authorities won’t say what Derris Lewis is accused of doing. They say the motive that night was robbery but won’t comment further.

“There were multiple people that entered and anyone who entered the premise is an accomplice,” said Franklin County Prosecutor Ron O’Brien.

Derris Lewis’ public defender, Libby Hall, declined to comment.

Police are occasionally stymied when using DNA evidence to determine which of two identical twins committed a crime. But unlike DNA, fingerprints can differ even between identical twins.

“It is well established that identical twins can and do have different fingerprints,” said professor Jay Siegel, director of the forensic and investigative sciences program at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis.

That’s because DNA is an inherited genetic characteristic. Fingerprints are subject to developmental differences in the womb, even among twins.

The attack happened just after midnight Jan. 18 in a tough neighborhood of small homes on the city’s north side. The area is a frequent target of city revitalization efforts to reduce crime.

The twins’ mother, April Agee, was asleep on a couch in the front room of her house, the only place she could lie comfortably because of her multiple sclerosis and cerebral palsy.

Dennis was asleep in the next room with the door shut. Derris had moved out a few weeks earlier and was staying with his girlfriend at her sister’s house in a different part of the city.

Agee says several men wearing black masks, white shirts and white sneakers entered the house, put a gun to her head, demanded money and asked who else was in the house.

“They kept saying, ‘Where’s the money, where’s the money,’ with a .45 up to my head,” Agee, 47, recalled at her daughter’s home. She doesn’t know who the men were.

“I couldn’t do nothing but be still. God say, ’Be still,’ and I was, but my son started fighting them,” she said.

Agee said one of the men kicked Dennis’ bedroom door in and began struggling with the 17-year-old, beating him with the leg of a bar stool. She heard someone yelling, “He’s too strong,” then the sound of a gun going off.

Diane Lewis, nine months pregnant, found her brother sprawled on steps to the attic of the small Cape Cod home.

After police arrived and medics took Dennis to the hospital, she called Derris on his cell phone to tell him what had happened. She says Derris rushed to the neighborhood, parked his car in the middle of the street and tried to get into the house but was stopped by police.

Too stunned to speak after Diane told him Dennis had died, Derris walked outside his sister’s house, head in his hands, paced back and forth, and finally said, “I know he’s in God’s hands.”

The family says there was no forced entry. They don’t know if the front door was locked before Dennis and his mother went to bed that night.

The robbers did not take $235 in cash in an envelope in Dennis’ room, money he was saving for a trip to visit Florida State University, where he planned to go to college.

The family believes police made a mistake with the palm print.

Derris’ prints were in the room because he had lived there until recently, Diane Lewis said, recalling a savage scene of destruction in the bedroom with blood everywhere.

“It was Dennis’ blood on top of Derris’ print,” she said, her voice rising.

She named her daughter, born one month and three days later, Dennisa, in honor of her dead brother.

The twins grew up without their father, who left when they were 2. Their mother does not work because of her disabilities and gets by on government assistance.

The boys followed each other’s tracks through school. At East High School Dennis played the trombone in the marching band; Derris is the lead drum major. Teachers called them two peas in a pod.

They both ran track, played volleyball and tennis. Last fall, Derris played the wizard in the school’s production of “The Wiz.” Dennis played the scarecrow. Both were head cashiers at a Giant Eagle grocery store.