Semaj Smith was a 27-year-old Black man from Brooklyn, New York, whose night in Inwood ended in sudden violence in the early hours of March 12, 2017. After a night out at a nearby nightclub, an argument reportedly broke out and escalated, spilling onto Nagle Avenue and turning deadly.
Just before dawn, police responded to reports of a shooting and found Smith outside a building near 228 Nagle Avenue, in the stretch between Academy Street and West 204th Street.
He was unconscious and unresponsive, suffering gunshot wounds to the chest and lower torso, and emergency responders rushed him to Saint Barnabas Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
In the immediate aftermath, investigators said the case was still unfolding and that no arrests had been made. The scene offered little in the way of easy answers—only the stark facts of the gunfire, the hurried transport to the hospital, and a homicide investigation that, at least publicly, had no name attached to the trigger.
More than a year later, the investigation appeared to remain active. In July 2018, police released an image of a man they wanted to identify and question in connection with Smith’s killing, describing the person as a man in his 20s or 30s with a stocky build and a light complexion. They said he was last seen wearing a white-and-blue striped sweatshirt, dark pants, and white shoes, and they asked anyone with information to contact the NYPD’s Crime Stoppers hotline.
