A family is confused and in mourning after a horrific crime perpetrated by a relative over the weekend. On Saturday, Sept. 29, 2018, a man later identified as Shawn Smith, 20, flagged down a New York Police Department squad car in his Brooklyn, New York, neighborhood around 3:30 A.M. He told the officers, “I think my brother’s hurt” … “Take me there and I’ll tell you more.”
According to the NYPD, Smith took the officers into the courtyard of the apartment building he lived in and showed them the broken and bloodied body of his little brother Shimron Smith, 4. He calmly told the officers that he had thrown his brother from the roof of the 7-story building, a confession he later repeated while in police custody. The New York Post reported that Smith had a history of mental illness and spent three weeks confined to a mental institution earlier in the year. His family immigrated from Guyana last year, but Smith could not join the family immediately because of his hospitalization.
According to his mother, he has exhibited violent behavior before and she had called police, but the family was at a loss to explain his actions. Smith has been charged with murder and on Sunday, as he was being led past reporters, he proudly exclaimed, “I’ve finally become a criminal!”
