Kimani Smith, a 27-year-old Black/African American man from Milwaukee, died on June 18, 2025, after a confrontation inside or near a residence on the city’s northwest side ended in an unusual and deadly shooting. Milwaukee police said the incident unfolded during an argument near North 42nd Street and West Auer Avenue. Shortly before 4:30 p.m., a woman involved in the dispute fired a gunshot at herself. That same gunshot also struck Smith, fatally wounding him.
Both people died as a result of the single violent episode.
Investigators remained at the scene for hours that evening. Another account placed the police activity near 42nd Street and Concordia Avenue, with detectives moving in and out of a residence while the Milwaukee County Medical Examiner's Office responded later that evening. Relatives of someone involved in the incident were reportedly at the scene and were visibly distraught. Police said no one else was injured. The circumstances released by investigators indicated that Smith was not killed in an exchange of gunfire or by an unidentified assailant fleeing the scene; instead, he was struck when the other person involved discharged the weapon against herself during the argument.
The Milwaukee County Medical Examiner's Office later identified the woman as Alyssa Ouradnik, 22, and confirmed Smith as the other person who died. Public reporting did not describe Ouradnik as a fugitive or an outstanding suspect because she died in the same incident. Police accounts characterized the shot that killed her as self-inflicted and said it subsequently struck Smith. Because the person who fired the weapon was also deceased, no arrest followed in connection with Smith's death, and available reports do not indicate that prosecutors filed homicide charges against another person or that investigators were seeking an additional shooter.
The publicly released information does not provide a detailed explanation of what sparked the argument, the relationship between Smith and Ouradnik, who owned the firearm, or precisely how the bullet traveled from Ouradnik to Smith. Ouradnik's family later wrote in her obituary that she had been struggling for months while trying to leave what they described as an unsafe environment, while also acknowledging that they might never know exactly what happened on June 18. That statement adds context to her final months but does not establish what occurred during the confrontation or change the police account of the shooting.
Smith's death was subsequently memorialized by New Pitts Mortuary. Records associated with his memorial list his date of birth as March 25, 1998, and his death in Milwaukee on June 18, 2025. A visitation and funeral were scheduled for July 11 at Unity Gospel House of Prayer in Milwaukee. The case therefore appears, based on the publicly available police and news accounts, to have ended with the deaths of both Smith and the person who fired the fatal shot rather than with an arrest, criminal prosecution, trial, or conviction.
