In the early morning hours of Friday, September 13, 2013, the life of 24-year-old Vernon Davis was tragically cut short on a street in Northeast Washington, D.C. Officers from the Fifth District responded to a call of an unconscious male in the 1900 block of 3rd Street, NE at approximately 8:22 a.m. Upon arrival, they discovered a young man suffering from an apparent gunshot wound.
Emergency medical services personnel found no signs of life, and he was pronounced dead at the scene.
For years, the case of Vernon Davis's death remained a painful mystery for his loved ones and the community. Detectives with the Metropolitan Police Department's Homicide Branch diligently pursued leads, suspecting that his murder was connected to another homicide that had occurred nearly a year earlier in the same Eckington neighborhood. It was believed that Davis had been a witness to the killing of Anthony Weathers on Halloween night in 2012.
A breakthrough in the decade-old cold case finally came in September 2023. An imprisoned police informant provided crucial information that corroborated evidence detectives had gathered over the years. This new information led to the arrest of Gregory Smithwick, 31, who was subsequently charged with first-degree murder in the death of Vernon Davis.
Investigators believe that Smithwick killed Davis because he had witnessed the murder of Weathers and had responded to a grand jury subpoena. Witnesses had told police that it was known in the neighborhood that Davis had been in contact with law enforcement, and some believed he was 'snitching.' Tragically, at the time of his death, a card given to witnesses subpoenaed by a grand jury was found on Davis's person. The arrest of a suspect brought a long-awaited sense of justice to a case that had haunted the community for a decade.
