On the evening of December 2, 2016, 19-year-old Moniteon T. Smith, a male resident of Nashville, drove his black Nissan Altima to the parking lot of Swett’s Restaurant, the legendary meat-and-three at 28th Avenue North and Clifton Avenue. Friends and online memorials later described him as a very loving young man, a former Maplewood High School football player who had suited up on the defensive line, and a father of three who was working at an AutoZone store as he tried to build a life for
his children.
Just after 5:30 p.m., in the fading light of a Friday evening, the lot outside Swett’s was busy with regulars coming and going when Moniteon pulled in and parked. Investigators later pieced together that he waited there for around ten minutes, alone in his car, before a small gold four-door sedan pulled up beside him. Witness accounts and police reports say he then climbed into the passenger side of the gold car, and almost immediately an apparent struggle broke out inside. Moments later, the passenger door flew open and Moniteon tumbled out onto the pavement, mortally wounded by gunfire, as the gold sedan sped away down Clifton Avenue. First responders rushed him from the asphalt outside the restaurant to Vanderbilt University Medical Center, but he could not be saved and was pronounced dead there.
His killing was one of three homicides in less than twenty-four hours in Davidson County that weekend, a grim cluster of violence that shook Nashville. News of a young man gunned down outside a beloved neighborhood institution hit especially hard; Swett’s was the sort of place where families gathered after church and teams celebrated after games, and locals struggled to reconcile that familiar setting with the image of crime-scene tape and flashing blue lights. In the days that followed, candles were lit in his memory, online tributes poured in from relatives and friends who called him “Monster Trey” and spoke of how incomplete they felt without him, and the community waited anxiously for answers about why such a meeting in a restaurant parking lot had ended in death.
Detectives quickly focused on the mysterious gold sedan. They released still images from surveillance cameras showing the car, believed to be a small, tan or gold four-door—possibly a 2002–2005 Hyundai Sonata—with a temporary tag. Police described how Moniteon had driven a black Nissan Altima into the lot, waited, then entered that car shortly before the struggle and shooting. Public pleas went out through local television and social media, urging anyone who recognized the vehicle or its occupants to come forward. For months, the investigation moved in fits and starts, with the image of that gold car becoming a symbol of an unanswered question: who had met Moniteon in that parking lot, and why had the encounter turned deadly?
By early 2017, detectives publicly identified a young Nashville man, 19-year-old Sterling D. Hewitt, as someone they wanted to question about the shooting. He was already being sought for failing to appear on a misdemeanor drug charge, and investigators said they believed he might have information about what happened the night Moniteon was killed. Police stressed that Hewitt was wanted for questioning rather than announcing a murder charge, a detail that underscored how the case still seemed to hinge on reluctant witnesses and fragile leads. Appeals for tips continued, and for Moniteon’s family the wait stretched on, each update a reminder that his killer had not yet been named.
The breakthrough came more than a year later. In July 2018, a Davidson County grand jury indicted 21-year-old Erick Archibald in connection with Moniteon Smith’s death. Police announced that Archibald had been arrested on charges of first-degree murder and especially aggravated robbery, accused of shooting Moniteon in the parking lot of Swett’s Restaurant on December 2, 2016. According to official summaries, investigators believed the sequence of events was the same one described in the early reports: Moniteon waited in his car, got into the passenger side of the gold sedan, an altercation erupted, the passenger door opened, and he fell to the ground as the other vehicle fled. Archibald was booked into jail with bond set at $150,000, signaling that, at least from law enforcement’s standpoint, the homicide was finally considered a solved case.
Even after the indictment, however, the story around the suspect continued to evolve. Several years later, local crime reporting described Archibald being arrested again at an East Nashville gas station, allegedly carrying a loaded handgun, marijuana, and other drugs while he was out on bond for first-degree murder and especially aggravated robbery, leading to fresh charges and a higher bond. Public inmate-locator records now list an Erick E. Archibald incarcerated at Davidson County facilities with an unknown release date, indicating that he is serving time for felony convictions, though those databases do not clearly spell out the exact charges or link them explicitly to Moniteon’s case.
For those who loved Moniteon T. Smith, the legal twists and the technical language of indictments and inmate files offer only partial closure. What remains most vivid in the public record is the image of a young Nashville man who once spent his Friday nights under stadium lights for Maplewood High, who later worked long shifts and cared for his children, meeting someone in a familiar parking lot and never coming home. The arrest and charging of a suspect answered some of the questions that haunted his family and community, but the quiet grief expressed in memorials and candles shows that the deeper loss—the empty place at family gatherings, the children growing up without their father—cannot be settled by court documents alone.
