Darnell Smith (5 of Diamonds, California)

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Our card this week is Darnell Smith, the five of diamonds from California. Darnell's family never expected him, a pastor's son and an ambitious student, to get killed in a hail of gunfire. For a young man without even a whisper of a criminal record, no one would have thought that his life would end in such a violent way at the age of 20. But Darnell Smith's death became entangled in a world that his family was never a part of.

And it left investigators scrambling to unravel what would soon become a neighborhood nightmare. For more than a decade, it seemed like there was no hope for justice. But when our reporters went to visit one of the crime scenes, they may have stumbled upon the key to solving this case. I'm Ashley Flowers, and this is The Deck.

It was a summer night in San Diego in 2008 when 20-year-old Darnell Smith was cruising around in his new Cadillac with his friend and his cousin. His playlist blasting. They were talking about pretty girls, making jokes about who was better at talking to said pretty girls, as their casual Saturday night slipped into Sunday. Father's Day, actually.

Just after midnight, they were on their way to Darnell's aunt's house to hang out. This was a last-minute decision after the beach party that they were supposed to go to fell through. Two other friends in the car ahead of them parked in front of Donna Jones Littleton's house, or... to Darnell, Aunt Donna's. And since that spot was taken, Darnell pulled his Cadillac up in front of the neighbor's home instead.

It was just about 12.23 in the morning when the guys in Darnell's car hopped out and started making their way up the sidewalk to the house. But Darnell hung back to lock up his Cadillac. It was just a few seconds. But those few seconds changed everything. They're walking on the east sidewalk. They're walking northbound on Pyramid towards Joan's house from the car. And the shooter approaches from behind.

Several shots ring out. That's Ron Newquist from the San Diego Police Department. He responded to the scene that night. And he would go on to work Darnell's case until he retired in 2022. He was found lying on the sidewalk with multiple gunshot wounds. What was remarkable was there was 19 shell casings around him, so that's a lot of shots fired. And he was hit numerous times. He had gunshot wounds to the torso, both arms, his left leg, and multiple to the head.

Pictures we obtained from the scene show that the barrage of gunfire actually left holes near the neighbor's driveway, denting a three-foot or so brick wall that separated the homes. His autopsy later came back showing Darnell had been hit by 12 of those 19 bullets. And it was Aunt Donna who had to call her brother Donald's house in the middle of the night, on Father's Day, to tell him that his son had been shot.

When the phone began ringing, he and his wife, Darnell's stepmom, Frances Jones, they were fast asleep, likely resting up for church that morning, where Donald, the pastor, would be giving the Father's Day sermon. So it was Frances who eventually picked up. Hey, I'm asleep. Like what's going on? And it didn't dawn on me because you hear about those emergency calls, but we just never had one.

I wasn't expecting, like, bad news. She was like, you gotta get here. And I'm like, what's going on? And she was, like, hysterical. She was screaming in the phone. Still not totally understanding, Frances asked if she could come the next day instead. Donald was sound asleep. And I was like, what's going on? Then I woke up. The news that Darnell had been shot propelled Frances to shake her husband awake and drive the seven minutes to Donna's house.

And those seven minutes felt like seven hours. When they finally arrived, Donald and Frances had to fight to get to their son. We're like going around in circles because it's like police cars, yellow tape everywhere. And they wouldn't let us.

go through and i'm just like running down her her street it seemed like forever and so as i'm running it's like two or three police officers and i'm trying to get past them they're like stopping me they're like where are you going it's like no how can i help you And I'm like, my son has been shot and I'm just trying to figure out what's going on. Like, is he in the hospital? Like, how bad is it? It was really bad. Darnell had been declared dead there at the scene.

It didn't take long for articles reading local pastor's son murdered or pastor's son shot on Father's Day to appear in the news. And Darnell's life was about as squeaky clean as you could expect from a pastor's son. He'd never even had so much as a speeding ticket. Here's his dad, Pastor Donald Jones. He was a Green Bay Packer fan. He loved sports. He loved movies. He was very creative.

A young man, he had big dreams. He had a lot of what we call ambition. He's very ambitious. He was preparing to take his education to the next level. I think a week or two before, he took a visit to UCLA. He was playing basketball, and he was working as a full-time employee at Cox Communications. So, yes, he was something else. Something else.

Learning about who Darnell was in life left police scratching their heads after his death. Because there was no clear motive here. And it was apparent that the shooting was intentional. What police later learned from the young men who'd been with Darnell was that after they'd all parked, a dark SUV pulled up behind them. A man in an all-black hoodie pulled up.

got out of the driver's seat and came up behind them on the sidewalk. And after he unloaded the 19 rounds at Darnell, no one else was hit, mind you. He immediately ran back to the dark SUV and fled the scene. In this case, everybody's going to describe the suspect vehicle as an SUV. That goes from a Honda Pilot to a Lexus SQV to a Ford Escape. So you get a lot of different descriptions of a vehicle.

Darnell Smith exits the car, and a black male is seen exiting this SUV, depending on which witness you talk to. Now, it's a black male in a hoodie. That's the description we have. No one was able to get a good description of the shooter or a license plate on the vehicle because as soon as shots started ringing out, they all either ran or dove to the ground looking for cover. And there weren't any cameras in the area that could be helpful either.

And with no one in Darnell's family able to think of anyone who would want to cause him harm, police were left to wonder if this targeted attack was really that personal after all. Detective Newquist worked in the San Diego PD's street gang unit for two years before moving to homicide. And he said that while Darnell didn't have ties to gangs, that didn't really matter.

Here's our reporter Annie Roderick-Jones digging in a little about this. Was it common for something like this to happen where a kid gets shot that didn't have any gang ties? Completely common. Just association. Unfortunately, there's a lot of innocent victims that are caught in that. There's obviously targeted gang members, but there's a lot of just shooting at people for being in a certain neighborhood. You know, they're targeted.

just by association or, oh, he went to Morris. He's probably Skyline. Oh, he went to Lincoln High School. He's a Lincoln gang member when that's not the truth. You know, it's less than 2% or whatever of these guys that are documented gang members.

So everybody is perceived, whether you're a gang member or not, that you're from one of these rival sets. But Emerald Hills was hated. Their gang symbol is the Playboy Bunny. So all the other gangs, when they would go out to Emerald Hills, they'd call it... bunny hunting. I've been on wiretaps and they're like, hey, we're out bunny hunting. I think it's important to point out that from 2002 to 2007, data shows that the number of young black homicide victims killed by guns

rose by more than half. And current data shows that that danger hasn't changed. Young Black men like Darnell between 18 and 24 years old are nearly 23 times more likely to be shot and killed and their white peers. If this was connected to gang violence, it might explain why it made it so hard for police to find other witnesses.

No one wants to cooperate with the police and that's not good or bad. It's not an indication of, you know, morality or anything. It's just, it's a different world back then. And that whole stop snitching campaign was huge then. We asked Detective Newquist about this Stop Snitching campaign, which wasn't an official campaign, more of an unofficial code of silence with law enforcement. I mean, you may have heard of the whole Snitches Get Stitches and such.

Well, this showed up on everything from music labels to T-shirts, even stickers. And it checks out. Statistics show that Black communities have a deeply rooted distrust in law enforcement. And that stems from a history of police brutality that has disproportionately impacted communities of color. So it makes a whole lot of sense that gleaning information was tough in this investigation. So without witnesses...

or suspects, or a for-sure motive, the only thing police were left with were ballistics. They're all shot from a Glock firearm. All 19 rounds. So this person emptied a full magazine and had one in the chamber in order to get 19 rounds off without reloading. But all of which appeared to hit Mr. Smith. Or directly in front of them is a three-foot brick wall that's also has ballistic strikes in it. Obviously, we want to get those casings in as quick as we can. Get them in, as in...

get them processed, and compare evidence from other crime scenes. Because to Detective Newquist, the best way to get more evidence is from another crime. Or, as he puts it, I always say it takes... Violence to solve violence? And less than one month later, more violence is exactly what happened.

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Darnell was killed on June 15th. And less than a month later, on July 9th, police responded to another shooting less than four miles away. We have a shooting at 3675 College Avenue. which is across the 94 freeway. So it's in a completely different neighborhood. I call it kind of like no man's land because every gang can kind of be there. So we have a shooting and we don't know who the victims were, but a guy's...

Car gets hit multiple times and there's casings in the street. Those casings match our shell casings. Those bullets were fired from the exact same weapon used in Darnell's murder. When police responded to this scene, they didn't find anyone there. No one with a weapon and no one who'd been hit, just casings. The only other thing that investigators know and have told us about this July shooting.

is that the suspect was a black man somewhere between the ages of 27 and 30 years old, around 5 feet 9 inches tall and about 150 pounds. That's more than they had from the description of Darnell's shooter. If it was the same person. Unfortunately, that wasn't going to cut it. More violence didn't solve the violence. But there was a lot more violence around this time.

And it's possible that the answers are tied up somewhere there. There were so many shootings that raised questions in the months after Darnell was shot that the current detective on this case, Detective Tracy Barr, actually drove our reporting team by the different sites on their visit to San Diego. All of them within a few blocks of each other. Okay, so Trissy, do you think we should go like chronologically? So we...

We could go up the street here to where Brandon's was. And then as we come back down, we can go over to Bolenbacher, which is the next street. Just 11 days after Darnell was killed, there's another shooting. a guy we're calling Brandon. We're using this pseudonym at Detective Barr's request because this case is still active and because Brandon wasn't killed.

What started with Darnell had turned into a full-press neighborhood nightmare. As in, Darnell's family was scared for their lives. So this is the house where Brandon was. Okay, what street is this? Pyramid. Okay, same street, just maybe two blocks down. Yeah. So you can see the closest, like literally in a week, you have Darnell happen and then, you know, 10 days later.

This shooting happens right here. So Brandon was outside, and he was in his car. I think he was talking on the phone to, like, a girl, a girlfriend. And he kept seeing this dark SUV. driving by him. And he could tell there were several young black males in this vehicle. And he's just like, something's not right here. He was just starting to get that feeling. And they passed.

And then they started coming back, and so he decided he needed to get out of the car. And as he got out of the car and went to kind of hide on the passenger side is when he saw multiple guns come out from this vehicle, and they started shooting at him. Fortunately, he was not hit, but then obviously they take off. It's just interesting to me that literally, what, 10 days later, you have a shooting on the same street, just up the block, and it's the same suspects.

like description and vehicle description. Brandon's shooting stood out to investigators simply because of the location, the timing, and similar descriptions of suspects in vehicles. And like Darnell, he didn't have gang ties. But unlike Darnell, he did have a criminal history, mostly narcotics and domestic stuff, according to police. So yeah, there's still nothing to actually tie these cases together.

Barr even said that she wasn't sure if those bullet casings in the shooting were tested since it wasn't a homicide. She told our reporter that she couldn't find any lab reports on these, and she is currently in the process of trying to obtain those casings from the property room.

for a retest and comparison. But it's not just that case that's similar. There were more. So I was trying to see if there was an exact address because it just says 700. Okay. Which would have been... 701, those are the 600s. This one is going to be Andre. Andre, okay. So they were just parked on the street, him and his friend were talking, and that's when the SUV...

drove by and started shooting. And so this is really, just to have my bearings, this is like almost parallel to Darnell's head? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so literally, if these houses weren't here, we'd be looking directly across. were Darnell's. On July 20th, a man associated with the Emerald Hills gang was shot and killed on Bolenbacher Street, less than a minute from where Darnell died.

This victim, Andre, was out talking to a friend when they saw a vehicle drive by an open fire. His friend, who Detective Barr wouldn't name, didn't have more information other than the vehicle, which was, spoiler alert, a dark SUV. Investigators did test bullet casings recovered from this shooting, but in this case, they didn't match. The gun used to kill Andre was not the same one that had been used on Darnell.

Although police did end up recovering the firearm there. Detective Barr said police confiscated it at a home where multiple gang members lived a couple of months later. And while the gun was tested, there were too many people's DNA to find anything concrete. Detective Barr is currently in the process of retesting this.

In fact, she said that she feels like now that she's taken on this case, there is a massive investigative rabbit hole to go down that could connect all of these cases and possibly even others. including someone we're calling Johnny. That's so close. They're all so close. And then that street we passed, like right where that truck pulled out.

That's McHugh, and so that's where the other shooting was. Right. Yeah, that we believe Johnny's involved. This is the last of the spat of shootings that police believe may have been connected to Darnell's. It happened in January of the following year, in 2009, on the 5600 block of McHugh Street. Again, this is right around the corner from where Darnell was killed.

Police responded to the shooting and officers started following a car that appeared to be fleeing the scene. That car was a vehicle that was not an SUV. It was a truck. A white Ford F-150s type truck. Police kept following the speeding truck, and the whole incident ended in a fatal accident. The driver ran straight into a telephone pole at an intersection. So this is essentially the...

intersection where he crashed. I'm just not sure which light pole. My guess, if he's coming from that direction, was going to be, yeah, this corner. Which would be the south, southwest. When officers went up to the truck, they found a man dead behind the wheel. It was a neighborhood crip member, Johnny.

The proximity of the shooting to the others and Johnny's gang affiliation gave police reason to believe that he could be tied to more than this one incident. But with his death, they obviously weren't going to get any answers from him. They had to look at everything and everyone around him. And it turns out Johnny had a cousin who he frequently shared cars with. And guess what kind of car that cousin drove at the time?

a dark SUV. Now we're keeping the cousin's name under wraps because he is someone that Barr is looking into. And Detective Newquist says that based on numerous discussions with his former gang unit, He believes that these cousins were likely working together. Now, no weapon was ever found, and his hunch is that Johnny dropped off his cousin after that last shooting and ditched the weapon before trying to get away from police.

resulting in that deadly car crash. We confirmed that the cousin is still in the area. When Detective Barr had our reporters follow her in their car, The plan was to go to the scene that Johnny had sped away from before his deadly accident. But at the last minute, she told him not to stop. Just keep driving and meet her around the corner. So it's that house where that lady is.

maybe we just drive by it we can just like snap a photo driving by or something okay yeah i didn't want to really bring attention seemed like there was a lot going on at that house yeah okay yeah It was a home that had eight cars outside and a giant beware of dog sign, along with a barking dog that sounded as if that sign might be warranted. That's when Detective Barr...

pulled up next to our reporter's car and leaned over to drop a surprising observation. Did you guys see the car parked in front? The, like, black Ford Edge? So I'm going to go back by and get the license plate real quick. After years of descriptions of dark SUVs, Detective Barr and our team stumbled upon a vehicle matching that description that... just may have been hiding in plain sight the entire time. The first few weeks of school...

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What are the chances that it could be a car from as far back as Darnell's murder? I mean, that happened over 17 years ago. So, I mean, let's just say we weren't holding our breath. But a couple of weeks went by and our reporter Annie got an email from Detective Barr. And get this, she confirmed that the vehicle was a model from 2008, the same year that Darnell was shot.

I mean, what are the chances? Maybe it really had been sitting there all these years. This is still an open investigation. So there is information that investigators won't disclose. But Detective Barr did tell us that the owner of the car is someone with an extensive criminal record. Now, she's just recently taken on this case in April of 2025.

And she plans to follow up by interviewing the SUV's owner. What, in terms of, like, looking at this, do you think this is something that you feel like could be solved? I think so. I think... You know, just revisiting it, talking to the witnesses that were there. Maybe I can get more details from them. Like I said, the neighborhood, maybe the neighborhood's been talking the last 17 years.

On a sunny Thursday afternoon in San Diego, our reporters Annie and Nicole did something that we don't normally do on a reporting trip. They went to church. The church where Darnell spent a lot of his life. As a reminder, his father is a pastor at the Higher Praise Christian Fellowship in La Mesa. And it's here that they sat down with Darnell's father, his stepmom, his aunt, and his grandmother. And amid choir practice...

We learned about the young man who loved to play basketball with his father, who was working towards a business administration degree at Mesa College. The loving, thoughtful person who, as his stepmother said, would never get to marry or have children or start his own business or become the millionaire that he always declared he would be. Darnell spent most of his time with his family. And after his death, his family spent most of their time in this church, seeking out some semblance of comfort.

Can we open up in prayer, please? Absolutely. Are we ready to go? Absolutely. All right, Lord, we thank you for this privilege and this opportunity, this occasion. We thank you for new friends coming to join us too. have a conversation and to discuss a unique case, a special case, specific case for us, our family. Lord, we thank you for this time that you've allowed us to gather together and we just ask a special blessing in this gathering.

In Jesus' name, amen. Amen. Detective Barr was there in that moment as well. She joined the family for part of this interview and told them that she was going to do everything in her power to solve this case. She also let them know that she'd requested the governor's reward in hopes that an extra $50,000 will entice someone to come forward with information. That's actually the same award that we mentioned in a recent episode about Ron Harnish's death.

Spending time with Darnell's family, they shared their favorite memories of him, including his grandmother, Valerie Jones Carter. Something was wrong with my car. And I, at that shop, he told me to take it to. And so I had to catch the bus for a couple of days before the car got fixed. And he walked with me four o'clock in the morning.

We stood up on the hill down to the trolley. And I said, oh, I can't. I just said, no, we're going to do this together. I didn't even know that. That's hell. Darnell's murder left a hole that's as... prominent as those bullet indents left on the neighbor's wall. Ones that Donna Jones Littleton, Darnell's aunt, had never forgotten. Thirteen bullet holes, big old holes in there. her payment wall. We drove by there. Oh, did you? Pyramid? Yeah. Went to the neighborhood. Okay.

You saw the bullet. Are they still? They still got it because she said she was going to do that for us. She was never going to. She was never going to change it. And Darnell's cousin. the young man who dove to the ground when the bullet sprayed out and killed Darnell, there's something that he wouldn't change either. He actually chipped his tooth in that moment. And to this day, it's still a reminder.

He said, I'll never get it fixed because it reminds him of, you know, Darnell lost his life and all he lost was a tooth.

If you know anything about the murder of Darnell Smith in San Diego, California on June 15, 2008, it's time to come forward. Currently, there's a $3,500 reward for any information leading to the arrest and conviction of whoever's responsible. You can remain anonymous by calling San Diego Crime Stoppers at 888-580-8477. You can also call Detective Barr's desk phone at 619-531-2239.

If you're interested in learning more about Darnell and his family, you can actually read Frances Jones' book about her experience called Why? My Journey of Overcoming Grief. We're going to link to that in our blog. The Deck is an audio Chuck production with theme music by Ryan Lewis. To learn more about The Deck and our advocacy work, visit thedeckpodcast.com. I think Chuck would approve.

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