Juju Chang

I remember my son every day.

It's sad.

While interviewing the family, we learned that every year they held a vigil on the anniversary of Brian's murder at his gravestone.

From the outside looking in, it was the kind of case that police should have been motivated to solve quickly, but that is not what happened.

Instead, weeks turned into months, which eventually turned into years, and Brian's murder remained unsolved.

In November of 2020, our investigative team decided that we'd probably taken the case as far as we could to that point.

That's when the digital story came out.

The family was so appreciative that Brian's name was finally being talked about again, and some pressure, it seemed, would be put back on Miami-Dade police.

You may remember this case because Pata was a star football player for the University of Miami.

We felt like that got the ball rolling again.

It opened it up big time.

Our story was the very first time that the public had been told that Rashawn Jones, a former teammate of Brian Pata's, was the person that police were considering most likely to have killed him.

After reading the ESPN article and then just kind of putting this piece and this piece together to kind of make it make sense, I started to believe that there was definitely a capability of this being Rashaun.

I received a voicemail from Edric, Brian's older brother.

Hey, Dan, good morning.

It's heating up really good.

I think they're about to make an arrest soon.

Nine months after our story comes out, we get word that the Miami-Dade Police Department is moving to arrest Rashawn Jones.

I believe one of the catalysts was the ESPN article that came out.

I think also the state prosecutor also getting a little more aggressive in his approach towards arresting someone.