Troy J. Smith was a 37-year-old Black man whose life was taken in a shooting on June 16, 2017, on Milwaukee’s west side. In the early morning hours that Friday, police were called to the area of North 27th Street and West McKinley Boulevard, where Smith was found lying in the middle of the street. He had been shot and was pronounced dead at the scene.
Authorities initially described the incident as a homicide, and Smith was publicly identified as the victim approximately six hours after the shooting.
The scene indicated that multiple shots had been fired. Numerous evidence markers were placed around Smith’s body, and investigators reported finding multiple spent shell casings in the roadway. McKinley Boulevard between 27th and 28th streets was closed while Milwaukee police processed the area, documented evidence and attempted to determine what had happened in the moments before the gunfire. Officers also went door to door in the surrounding neighborhood seeking witnesses or information that could help identify the person responsible.
In the immediate aftermath, police had not announced a motive or identified a suspect. As of approximately 9:30 that morning, no one was in custody. The publicly available reporting from the time does not describe whether Smith had been involved in an argument, whether he had been approached by someone in a vehicle or on foot, or whether investigators believed he had been specifically targeted. What remained visible at the scene was the aftermath: Smith in the roadway, numerous shell casings nearby and detectives attempting to reconstruct the shooting from physical evidence and information gathered from the neighborhood.
Later online cold-case records continue to list Troy Smith’s death as a murder investigated by the Milwaukee Police Department, indicating that the killing has remained associated with unsolved homicide records. Those publicly available records do not identify a named suspect, arrest, criminal charge, prosecution, trial or conviction connected to Smith’s death. No reliable online source located for the case shows that anyone has been held criminally responsible for the June 16, 2017 killing.
