Justin Smith evaded arrest until an Atlanta police encounter returned him to Philadelphia to face charges in Dianna Brice’s death.
PHILADELPHIA, Penn. — For almost four years after Dianna Brice was found dead in Southwest Philadelphia, the man accused of killing her remained beyond the reach of the investigators searching for him. That changed in March 2025, when Atlanta police encountered Justin Smith during a traffic stop. The arrest ultimately returned him to Pennsylvania, where a jury convicted him of murdering Brice and the unborn child she was carrying.
Smith, now 28, has been sentenced to life in prison without parole for first-degree murder, followed by another 40 to 80 years for crimes tied to the killing and its aftermath. His sentence ended an unusually prolonged route to trial that involved a Philadelphia arrest warrant, a federal unlawful-flight case and a search involving the FBI and law enforcement agencies in multiple states. Once Smith finally faced jurors in August 2026, the principal dispute was not whether he helped conceal Brice’s death. Smith admitted much of that conduct. The question was whether the shooting itself had been intentional.
The arrest that made the trial possible began as a routine police encounter hundreds of miles from Philadelphia. Atlanta officers stopped a vehicle March 8, 2025, over an expired registration, according to reporting about Smith’s capture. Smith gave officers a false identity and then fled, first in the vehicle and later on foot. Police caught him and eventually confirmed that he was the man wanted in the Philadelphia homicide case. Four days later, the FBI announced that a fugitive sought for years had been taken into custody.
By that point, the case had been open since spring 2021. Brice, 21, disappeared March 30 after leaving a Delaware County laundromat with Smith. She was 14 weeks pregnant with his child. Her family reported her missing when they could no longer reach her. Smith initially gave an account in which Brice had left his car during an argument, according to reporting on the investigation. Detectives soon developed evidence that caused them to focus on Smith instead.
Investigators obtained cellphone records showing Brice’s and Smith’s phones traveling along the same route on the day she disappeared. A cell-site expert later testified that Brice’s phone eventually stopped transmitting location information. Meanwhile, detectives were tracing Smith’s Ford Fusion and another vehicle associated with his friend Tylydia Garnett. Surveillance cameras would become an important part of the case, documenting movements around Philadelphia after Brice was last seen alive.
Her body was found April 5, 2021, in an abandoned area of Southwest Philadelphia. The medical examiner determined that Brice had suffered 11 gunshot wounds to the head and another gunshot wound to the shoulder. Philadelphia authorities obtained a warrant for Smith’s arrest four days later. But by then, prosecutors said, he had begun a journey that would keep him away from Pennsylvania for years.
Authorities said Smith and Garnett traveled to Florida after Brice’s death. Evidence presented at trial indicated that Smith hoped to reach Cuba but never made it there. He eventually settled in the Atlanta area. In August 2023, federal authorities charged him with unlawful flight to avoid prosecution and issued a federal arrest warrant. The FBI said its Philadelphia office worked with other federal offices and police agencies in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Florida, North Carolina and New Jersey during the effort to locate him.
While Smith was absent, prosecutors moved forward against Garnett. She was arrested in April 2021 and later pleaded guilty to offenses arising from her role in concealing Brice’s body and helping destroy evidence. By the time Smith went to trial, Garnett had already been sentenced and was on probation. She took the witness stand for the prosecution and told jurors that Smith had admitted shooting Brice. She also described helping him in the period after the killing.
Defense attorney Samuel Stretton attacked Garnett’s credibility. He argued that a person who had faced her own criminal charges had a reason to provide prosecutors with testimony that shifted responsibility toward Smith. The prosecution, however, had evidence independent of Garnett’s account. Surveillance footage showed activity around a Kensington garage and a Hyundai linked to her. Video showed Garnett carrying trash bags and later showed her and Smith moving what appeared to be a heavy object into the vehicle, according to trial testimony.
Investigators later found Brice’s blood inside the Hyundai, prosecutors said. Other surveillance footage showed Garnett buying gasoline before Smith’s Ford Fusion was set on fire near Cobbs Creek. Authorities were able to recover a fired cartridge casing from the burned vehicle. The District Attorney’s Office said forensic analysis matched that casing to one found with Brice, creating a physical link between the damaged car and evidence recovered from the victim.
When Smith eventually took the witness stand in his own defense, he did not try to explain away all of that evidence. Instead, he drew a distinction between the shooting and what he did afterward. Smith testified that he and Brice had been arguing after she learned she had tested positive for herpes and believed he was responsible. He said Brice had a handgun during the dispute and at one point pointed it toward him and then herself.
Smith told jurors that he reached for the weapon and that it discharged during the struggle. He said the handgun had been modified with a device that allowed rapid fire. According to his testimony, the multiple shots were the result of an uncontrolled discharge rather than an intentional decision to kill. Smith acknowledged that he did not call 911 afterward. He also admitted taking part in concealing Brice’s body and burning his car. He said he believed authorities would not accept his account of an accidental shooting.
Prosecutors argued that his explanation was incompatible with both the medical evidence and his conduct. Assistant District Attorney Lauren Crump focused on the number and placement of Brice’s wounds and urged jurors to consider what Smith did when the shooting ended. Rather than calling for medical help, prosecutors said, he enlisted assistance, moved Brice’s body, destroyed evidence and rapidly left Pennsylvania. Crump argued that those were calculated actions rather than signs of temporary panic.
The jury ultimately convicted Smith of first-degree murder in Brice’s death and third-degree murder of an unborn child. Jurors also found him guilty of arson, conspiracy to commit arson, evidence tampering, abuse of a corpse and two firearm offenses. Judge Anthony Kyriakakis imposed the mandatory life-without-parole term for first-degree murder and ordered the 40-to-80-year sentence for the remaining offenses to run consecutively.
For Brice’s relatives, Smith’s capture had meant that the case could finally move beyond an open warrant. Her mother, Betty Cellini, had spent years waiting for the defendant to be brought back to Philadelphia. Family members attended the trial, where they heard testimony about Brice’s final known movements, the forensic findings, the surveillance evidence and Smith’s explanation of the shooting.
The long delay also preserved a painful divide between the timing of the crime and the timing of accountability. Brice was killed in 2021, but Smith was not apprehended until 2025. His trial did not take place until August 2026. During that period, Brice’s older son continued growing up without his mother while her family waited for the homicide case to reach a courtroom.
Relatives described Brice as a caregiver who wanted to train as a dialysis technician. She had also been preparing for a gender-reveal celebration connected to her pregnancy. Brice died without learning that she was expecting another son. Those personal details were separate from the evidence used to establish Smith’s guilt, but they remained central to how Brice’s family described the losses created by her death.
The fugitive chapter of the case is now over, as is the criminal trial. Smith is no longer a wanted man facing unresolved murder charges. He is a convicted murderer serving a life-without-parole sentence, with decades of additional imprisonment imposed for the crimes surrounding Brice’s death.
What began as a disappearance in Delaware County ultimately became a multistate search, an Atlanta arrest and a Philadelphia murder prosecution. The traffic stop that exposed Smith’s identity did not solve the underlying evidentiary questions, but it returned him to the jurisdiction where a jury could finally decide them.
Author note: Last updated October 17, 2026.