On the evening of July 25, 2023, Di’Shon Smith was shot and killed in Baltimore, Maryland, after gunfire erupted in the Lakeland area along the 3200 block of Hollins Ferry Road. He was a 20-year-old Black man. Police were called to the scene around 6:15 p.m., and when officers arrived they found him and another man, Deshaun Waters, suffering from gunshot wounds in a parking lot where people had been gathered in daylight, in a place busy enough that cameras were already watching.
Smith died there, on the pavement, before he could be taken anywhere for help.
Investigators later pieced together what happened through surveillance footage that, prosecutors said, captured the attack in chilling sequence: three armed men moved in on the group, and one slipped behind Waters and shot him in the neck. As panic scattered the parking lot, the other two gunmen pursued Smith and shot him multiple times. The shooters then vanished into a silver Nissan Sentra—described as heavily damaged on the driver’s side—using it as their getaway vehicle as the scene behind them filled with sirens and shock.
By the next day, July 26, 2023, the Nissan was found abandoned in the 500 block of Millington Avenue. Detectives tracked its path using more video along the route, and surveillance near where it was left behind showed two people getting out and cleaning out the vehicle before walking away together—an ordinary-looking moment that, investigators said, became a crucial link between the men on camera and the violence the night before. Months later, police identified and arrested two suspects, Tyrone Payne and Vincent Harris, and charged them in connection with the killings.
The case ultimately ended in convictions for both men. Payne was sentenced on August 21, 2025, to two consecutive life sentences for his role in the fatal shootings, while Harris was also found guilty and later sentenced on October 7, 2025, to two life terms with all but 140 years suspended, following a jury conviction on two counts of first-degree murder and related gun charges. Prosecutors described the ambush as organized and deliberate, involving a driver and three shooters working together, and the courts imposed punishments designed to ensure both convicted men would spend the rest of their lives behind bars.
