GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — It's closure Adda Addi says her family prays will still come, after a decade of not knowing who killed her brother and why they did it.
Jason Salazar, 32, was shot and killed on April 24, 2006, in what police described as a robbery gone bad. Police said the person who shot him was already inside Salazar's Dickinson St. home on the city's southeast side when he returned.
Salazar's murder was one of 161 in Grand Rapids that year, but remains one of just 35 from that same time period unsolved, according to the Grand Rapids Police Department.
"It really leaves us in an empty spot, we feel that my brother deserves justice," said Adda Addi, Jason's sister. "He didn't deserve for this to happen to him.”
Addi remembers the day she and her mother received the call that her brother had missed work, something he never did.
"We were the ones who went to his home and we discovered him lying there dead," she told FOX 17. "You know that pain just never goes away.”
Even with a decade passed, Addi says the memories of her fun-loving brother remain. Before his death, Salazar worked for several years as a certified nursing assistant at a local home for the disabled where he loved interacting with his patients, his sister said.
"He had a dog that he called Mixer that he would bring to patients and they said when he brought the dog there it made all the patients happy," Addi said. "They said he was the first one there making coffee in the morning and always the last one to leave."
Salazar's daughter was just 7-years-old when her father was murdered. She'll be 18 in October, and headed to the University of Michigan to study engineering, Addi said.
"She loved him, adored him, he was just so active with her," Addi recalled. "He was a great dad, really close to his daughter, very close, they had a really good bond."
Tips early on in the investigation never yielded enough to pin the murder on any particular individual. And a motive is just as much of a mystery as it was ever, according to Addi, who said she doesn't believe her brother would've been targeted.
GRPD continues to have a detective assigned to the case tasked with "periodically ensuring it's reviewed for new information," as is policy for any cold case, Sgt. Terry Dixon told FOX 17.
"With the application of new technology and recent advances in DNA analysis, our ability to identify unknown offenders has dramatically increased and would aid in us to be successful in solving the case," Dixon said.
Addi says she believes there are others who know the truth, but have been too afraid to come forward with information on the case.
"Our family is really hoping and praying and pleading to the public if anyone has any information regarding my brother's death please just contact authorities," she said.
"We're missing a very big void in our life, and... it's just our hope and our prayers that justice will be served for my brother soon."
