On July 20, 2006, Adrienne Miranda, of Lutherville, Maryland, received the call that every parent dreads. On the line was her ex-husband, with whom she shared two sons, informing her that their 19-year-old son Joseph was dead. The only information known at that time was that the teenager had been found face down in the dirt after somehow being crushed under a Bobcat earth mover while working at his summer landscaping job. Joseph had recently graduated from high school and planned to attend college to become a landscape architect when his life was cut short. In the ensuing days after the tragedy, questions swirled around what exactly had happened to Joseph. One of the two witnesses at the scene—the Bobcat driver—seemed as confused as anyone, while the other told a shifting story about a supposedly freak accident.

What seems clear is that Joseph had been well liked by the other employees and was quickly climbing the workplace ladder, having already achieved a promotion to foreman at the time of his death. However, such success at a young age sometimes breeds resentment from others—especially those with more work experience or years with the company who have been denied the benefits and/or promotions to which they believe they are entitled—who feel the sting of powerlessness.

In any case, Adrienne never believed that her son’s death was an accident, even though this was the official ruling of every county authority that reviewed the case, including the prosecutor’s office in Carroll County (where the landscaping company was located), the prosecutor’s office and police in Baltimore County (where she and her son lived), and even prosecutors in nearby Frederick County. Nevertheless, the grieving mother vowed to fight as long as it would take to prove that her son was murdered—or to at least convince someone in authority to listen. It took more than five years, but she finally succeeded.

In August 2011, Joseph’s manner of death was officially changed from accident to homicide. Dr. Zubiullah Ali, the assistant medical examiner for Baltimore County who agreed to re-examine the autopsy report, found “no plausible explanation as to why [Joseph] was in a face down position while run over by the Bobcat” (Hermann, 2011), instead concluding that he had been pushed or knocked down into the path of the reversing machine.