Ma of Karina susp insists he’s innocent
through and I know she’s having that pain, carrying it daily because her daughter is not here anymore and she will never see her daughter again,” Lewis said.
Asked if she wanted to meet with the Vetranos, she said that was “a tough one. I don’t know how they would react.”
Mom Cathy Vetrano, peeking out the slightly ajar front door of her home, passed on the question of a get-together with Veta Lewis.
“No, no, we don’t want to comment. Thank you,” she said before shutting the door.
In February, the victim’s mother lashed out at the suspect, calling him “a savage murderer.”
Addressing him in court, she added, “Now your nightmare begins.”
Lewis, a Jamaican immigrant who works as a nursing assistant, recalled how she was always close with her son.
“He was very overprotective of me,” Lewis told The News. “Like today he would make sure I took a cab and not walk in the rain. He would tell jokes, hug me, kiss me, take me grocery shopping, we would go to church together.”
Lewis said the absence of her son, held without bail since his Feb. 5 arrest, left her with a feeling of emptiness.
“To look at his clothes, his bed, his shoes — it’s like he died,” she said, her voice cracking as she wiped away tears. “I’m not doing well . . . But I’m a Godfearing woman, praying for justice.”
Vetrano’s body was found in the high weeds alongside the path where she went for a summer evening jog. Her dad Philip found his daughter hours later, about 15 feet off the well-worn trail.
Cops said Lewis jumped and overpowered the victim, raping and killing the Queens woman despite her desperate fight for survival.
But Lewis said her son preferred the city’s streets to overgrown stretches like the one where Vetrano was killed.
“Listen — my son was not in no bushes, he was afraid of bugs, spiders things like that, scared to hell,” she said. “Even in Jamaica he would run away from bugs.”
Lewis claims that people around the city share her view of Chanel’s innocence — cab drivers and subway riders who stop to speak with her.
“I’ve even had strangers who recognize me come up to me, praying for me because even they can’t believe (the charges),” she said. “It brings tears to my eyes.
“Black, white, all people tell me that.” different