In the late hours of a November evening in Savannah, Georgia, a sequence of events unfolded that would end one man's life and lead to a lengthy investigation. On November 23, 2020, police responded to a vehicle crash at the intersection of Gwinnett Street and Martin Luther King Boulevard. Inside the vehicle, they discovered 36-year-old Kareem Smalls, a man known to some as 'Free Lunch Baby,' suffering from gunshot wounds. Smalls was rushed to a nearby hospital, but he ultimately succumbed to his injuries. Investigators soon determined that the gunshots had not been fired at the scene of the crash, but rather in the 600 block of Draper Street.
For nearly a year, the case of who killed Kareem Smalls remained a focus for the Savannah Police Department. The investigation was initially handled by the Homicide Unit before being transferred to the Major Crimes Unit in May of the following year. Detectives worked to piece together evidence and locate individuals who might have information. A significant breakthrough came when ballistics testing linked the shell casings from the Smalls shooting to another incident that had occurred a few months prior, where a woman and her young daughter were shot at.
In November 2021, authorities announced an arrest in the case. The suspect was identified as 24-year-old Dyanta Derall Samuels. At the time he was charged with murder, Samuels was already being held at the Chatham County Detention Center on unrelated drug charges from August 2021. The investigation had uncovered more evidence tying him to the crime, including GPS data from a rental car and witness testimony about a red Dodge Charger seen circling the area before the shooting.
In 2022, Dyanta Samuels faced a jury and was convicted on multiple charges, including Malice Murder and Aggravated Assault. During the trial, Samuels admitted to being in the area but denied any involvement in the shooting. He was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole. Samuels later appealed his conviction, but in February 2026, the Georgia Supreme Court upheld the jury's decision.
