Listen to article \u2022\u00a00:00 min<\/p>\n
Justin Smith was grasping for the gun that his pregnant girlfriend had pressed to her temple, he told a Philadelphia jury last week, when the weapon accidentally went off, firing 12 shots in a matter of seconds \u2014 11 of them into her head.<\/p>\n
Smith, 28, took the stand at his trial on murder and related charges in the death of Dianna Brice, 21, in Southwest Philadelphia and said the shooting was an accident. <\/p>\n
But a jury rejected Smith\u2019s account and convicted him of first- and third-degree murder on Friday in the 2021 death of Brice and her unborn child. Smith was also convicted of abuse of a corpse, arson, and related crimes after he admitted to committing those acts to cover up the killing. <\/p>\n
Common Pleas Court Judge Anthony Kyriakakis sentenced him to life in prison without the possibility of parole. <\/p>\n
During closing arguments, Assistant District Attorney Lauren Crump cast doubt on Smith\u2019s explanation of how his girlfriend died, saying it was impossible for that many shots to have fired into a concentrated area if the gun accidentally went off during a struggle over the weapon, as he suggested. <\/p>\n
She pointed to other problems with Smith\u2019s defense, urging jurors to reject his contention that the Glock handgun modified with a semiautomatic \u201cswitch\u201d was Brice\u2019s, not his. <\/p>\n
And she dismissed Smith\u2019s argument that he covered up the crime and fled Pennsylvania after the killing because he was scared, bidding jurors to recall his swift actions \u2014 setting his car on fire and disposing of Brice\u2019s body in trash bags \u2014 before heading to Florida in an attempt to reach Cuba. <\/p>\n
\u201cThat is not panic,\u201d Crump said. \u201cThat is premeditation.\u201d<\/p>\n
Brice, 21, of Upper Darby<\/a>, was 14 weeks pregnant with Smith\u2019s child when she died on March 30, 2021, Lindsay Simon, chief medical examiner for the Philadelphia Medical Examiner\u2019s Office, testified during the trial.<\/p>\n Prosecutors said she was last seen with Smith that day driving from a Delaware County<\/a> laundromat to Philadelphia, where the couple got into a volatile argument after Brice learned she had tested positive for herpes and accused her boyfriend of giving her the sexually transmitted infection. <\/p>\n It was the last time Brice was seen alive. <\/p>\n Police discovered her body<\/a> seven days later in a wooded area near 58th Street and Eastwick<\/a> Avenue in Southwest Philadelphia, covered in black trash bags and wrapped in a tan blanket. <\/p>\n She had been shot in the head 11 times at close range and struck once in her right shoulder. Simon, the medical examiner, said the shots would have almost certainly killed Brice instantaneously. <\/p>\n Philadelphia police quickly identified Smith as a suspect<\/a>: Cell phone records from the day Brice died showed her phone traveling the same path as Smith\u2019s phone \u2014 until 1:38 p.m., when the phone\u2019s trail went dark, said Anthony Vega, a former Philadelphia police detective who testified at the trial as a cell site expert.<\/p>\n Police also found Smith\u2019s dark gray Ford Fusion, burned to a blackened shell, near 59th Street and Florence Avenue, about a mile from where Brice\u2019s body was discovered. <\/p>\n Investigators traced the vehicle to Brice\u2019s makeshift grave site, and to where it was found burned, using video footage from street surveillance cameras, Philadelphia Detective Thorsten Lucke testified. <\/p>\n But the cameras did more than capture the Fusion\u2019s path: It also showed Smith and an accomplice, Tylydia Garnett, wearing gloves and loading what appeared to be a large object into the back of a Hyundai, which police traced to the same locations and to a gas station where its driver purchased a canister of fuel used to set the Fusion ablaze, prosecutors said. <\/p>\n While detectives soon suspected Smith was involved, he was not arrested until 2025, when Atlanta police took him into custody<\/a> after he gave an officer a fake name during a routine traffic stop and fled. <\/p>\n