Help with Protege and OWL

I am trying to access an owl file trough java. I'm using Eclipse if it matters.

Code:

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package source;

import edu.stanford.smi.protegex.owl.model.OWLModel;
import edu.stanford.smi.protegex.owl.model.OWLNamedClass;
import edu.stanford.smi.protegex.owl.ProtegeOWL;
import edu.stanford.smi.protegex.owl.inference.protegeowl.ReasonerManager;
import edu.stanford.smi.protegex.owl.inference.protegeowl.ProtegeOWLReasoner;
import edu.stanford.smi.protegex.owl.inference.dig.reasoner.DIGReasonerIdentity;

public class InitPro
{
        String ONTOLOGY_URL = "people.owl";
        String REASONER_URL = "http://localhost:8080";
        ProtegeOWLReasoner reasoner;
       
        public InitPro() throws Exception
        {       
                // Load the ontology from teh specified URL
                OWLModel model = ProtegeOWL.createJenaOWLModelFromURI(ONTOLOGY_URL);
               
                // Get the reasoner manager and obtain a reasoner for the OWL model
                //ReasonerManager reasonerManager= ReasonerManager.getInstance();
                //reasoner = reasonerManager.getReasoner(model);
               
        }//End of constructor

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It's constantly throwing an exception. people.owl is located locally and I've moved it around putting it in every folder that I can think of. Where should it go for Protege to find it? This is a team project and between the 12 of us we have been unable to figure it out.