Destini Smothers, 26: New York Mother's Body Found In Trunk; Boyfriend Arrested
The last thing anybody knew was that Destini Smothers had traveled to Jackson Heights, Queens from her home in Troy, New York, to attend the funeral of her boyfriend’s grandmother.
She never made it. No calls, no nothing, not even to her two kids.
“She loves those children and would do anything for them,” Destini’s aunt, Shareen King, told Dateline NBC. “She wouldn’t just leave them. And there’s no way in hell she’s not calling her mama. My sister is just devastated.”
Friends remember that Smothers, a mother of two, had celebrated her 26th birthday on November 3, 2020 at a bowling alley in Queens. But immediately after that, things got fuzzy.
Smothers disappeared.
Family and friends alerted the authorities that she was missing, but there were simply few clues as to her whereabouts.
Family members tried to trace the few steps she left behind. All to no avail.
“We went everywhere. We went to Maryland. We went to Pennsylvania. We were searching on the sides of the highway. We even reached out to spiritualists,” cousin Dominique Fowler-Washington told the New York Daily News at a vigil. “We’ve done all that we could. We want done right by Destini.”
The only thing they knew for sure was that she was last seen leaving the bowling alley with her longtime boyfriend, Kareem Flake, the father of her two children.
Flake reportedly told her family members that he and Smothers got into an argument while leaving the facility and that she left in a huff, angrily grabbing some of her personal belongings but leaving others behind, according to the New York Daily News.
“She would have never walked away without her things,” King told Dateline. “And in the middle of the night. It’s not like her.”
On Wednesday, March 10, 2021, a tow truck operator who was called to remove an abandoned Toyota found Smothers’ body inside the trunk.
Two days later, the city medical examiner determined that Smothers received a fatal blow to the head that fractured her skull.
Due to the deciding factor of death being blunt force trauma to the head, Smothers’ death has been ruled a homicide. The victim suffered a brain injury from a skull fracture, Medical Examiner spokeswoman Aja Worthy-Davis told reporters.
"[The boyfriend] has some involvement, because that was his car," aunt Tima Fowler told ABC7. "That was the car he was driving. The car went missing, she went missing, so it all points to him."
Because the body had been in the trunk so long, authorities had to use dental records, fingerprints and Smothers’ wrist tattoo to identify her, Fowler said the newspaper. The tattoo was her boyfriend’s name.
It is our hope and prayer that the Smothers family find peace and that the two children are protected and loved forever.
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