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Are California police missing domestic violence murders? New bill would let families review cases

In 2011, investigators found her hanging from a bath robe’s belt inside a closet. The Solano County Cororner’s Office declared her death a suicide. But Lewis, 36, had previously sought restraining orders against her husband, Vacaville pastor Mark Lewis, accusing him of domestic violence.

Four years after her death, Mark Lewis was sentenced to eight years in prison after pleading no contest to hiring three people to throw a molotov cocktail through the window of his ex-girlfriend’s Vacaville house. He had started dating that woman within days of his wife’s death, she told ABC News.

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Senate Bill 989’s lead author is Sen. Angelique Ashby, a former Sacramento city councilmember who knows Lewis’s brother, Sacramento Fire Capt. Joseph Hunter. He testified beside Ashby last week before the Senate Public Safety Committee and again on Tuesday before the Senate’s Judiciary Committee. The bill passed both committees unanimously.
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