Where you aware of the fact that you can lose a close loved one, such as a child or sibling, due to someone murdering them and you end up responsible for that murderers’ actions, no? well did you know that there is a fee, to clean up the crime scene of your loved ones and that you will be the person to foot the bill?
The “crime scene clean up fee”, is pay that is received by the cleaning crews who, have to come and remove your dead one’s body, from the place the body was found.
Rightfully so, this fee is charged due to the hazards the cleaning crew faces, by coming into contact with decomposing bodies, various bodily fluids such as blood, and also any debris that was left over from the murder.
Sadly, this fee is often applied to the relatives of the deceased or the business in which the murder occurred depending on the nature of the crime.
However, should not this cleaning fee be charged towards the murderers themselves, or the state waives the fee or pays the fee for every unsolved case without a killer caught?
Would this not encourage local police departments, to solve more murders in a more timely and aggressive manner, as to ensure state costs are down, and criminal justice up?
Why would anyone expect the family of the deceased, to be the ones who pay for their loved one’s murder clean up? Why ask the people who are grieving to pay a cleaning fee, instead of simply charging the killers?
These very questions were asked by the mother of slain Baltimore producer Devontae Eden and to no avail she has not gotten any answer as of yet.
Devontae Eden was murdered on November 17,2020, when he was fatally shot, while he worked at his studio in the early morning hours, Mr. Eden died on the scene causing a surprise charge to immediately be issued.
Devontae was a gifted producer, known fondly as “DDAE Kollage” in the music industry. He has worked with artist such as Future and scored work on shows such as Love and Hip Hop.
Devontae’s studio was located in historic Reisterstown Maryland, a usually quiet part of Baltimore county and his death had many residents and business owners feeling very uneasy and unsafe. However, no one felt more unsafe or uneased than Devontae’s own mother herself.
The studio Devontae was murdered in was a shared space, one that Devontae shared with his mother, one that she no longer wished to occupy anymore once she found her son dead inside there on that fateful November morning. This however caused more problems as the mother of the victim fell under both categories of the crime scene fee law & tenant breech law.
Mrs. Eden soon learned that not only was she being hit with a crime clean up fee of $9k, but also that her landlord denied her contract breakage and she now owes for the rent of a year at around $18k.
Mrs. Eden will never be able to have the comfort of seeing her child again, and she now has a fear of returning to work due to her son’s murder/s still being unknown and on the loose.
Between the clean up fee and the rental charge, Mrs. Eden has had to resort to asking for help on her GoFundMe fundraiser page.
“Any little bit helps towards the goal, even if it’s only to share the link it all helps in the end” she reiterated when asked how the public could get involved and be of assistance.
Mrs. Eden also ask that anyone who has any information on the murder of her son Devontae Eden, to please come forward or call 410-307-2020

[Submitted by Taneshia Franklin]