‘I don't want to leave without Kris:' Mother desperately seeks answers in son's disappearance

BOSTON — A desperate mother wants answers in her son’s disappearance more than three years after he never came home from school.

On Feb. 4, 2014, Kris Lewis, who was 13 at the time, got off his school bus in Dorchester and walked with a friend until he was about a block from his home.

That was the last time anyone says they saw him.

He was expected home from school at 5:30 p.m. and when he didn’t show up by 6 p.m., his mother got worried.

Nina Cancel has been searching for her son ever since.

Her family has been handing out posters and fliers with his picture on them, and they’re still making phone calls.

Cancel says she and friends sometimes just drive around the city looking for him.

“I haven’t gone up to anybody,” she laughed, but she said she people she thinks might be him all the time.

Cancel said Kris’s father’s side of the family ‘didn’t get along that well.’

“I’m just hoping that if he’s with anyone from his father’s side of the family that they would realize Kris is missed every single day,” Cancel said. “If Kris is with them, you know, just give me a heads up…just tell me he doesn’t want to be home, just to know that he’s okay.”

“I have three other sons that I have to tend to, I mean when I look at them, I see Kris every single day,” she said. “It’s hard every day.”

In June, Cancel is moving out of the city and she hopes she can find answers before that happens.

“I don’t want to leave without Kris. I’m kind of, like, incomplete without Kris. I don’t want to move, but, like I said, I have three other kids,” she said.

She rejects the suggestion that he was part of any gang activity and says she just wants to know where her son is.

According to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, 121 children are currently listed as missing in Massachusetts.

Kris is one of them.

Cancel said she hopes the lack of attention to Kris’s case isn’t because of his race.

“Because he’s an African-American kid, it’s hard to get anyone to even listen that he’s missing. Once they heard ‘black kid’ they said ‘it’s okay, black kids turn up missing all the time,” she said. “All kids are precious no matter what…they’re the reason why we’re supposed to be living.”

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