Photo: Baltimore Police Department
It was all an elaborate lie, police allege.
Three months later, the father and daughter are now under arrest.
Keith and Valerie Smith have yet to appear before a judge to enter pleas, and it was unclear Monday if either had retained an attorney who could comment on their behalf.
In a statement to the media, Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh called the killing of Smith, an electrical engineer, a “double tragedy,” given the new allegations that “family members staged” her homicide.
Keith Smith and his daughter Valerie.Kevin Richardson/Baltimore Sun/TNS/Sipa
He told ABC News the man he alleged killed his wife approached the car as she was handing the money to the woman.
“The guy came to say ‘Thank you,’ and the woman was saying ‘God bless you. God bless you,'” Kevin said. “While we’re looking at her saying ‘God bless you’ and my wife was handing her the money, he came over to the car and said, ‘Thank you’ and then he started stabbing my wife and snatched her necklace off and ran.”
The man also stole her purse, Smith claimed.
The couple were married for five years.
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In a different interview after the killing, with localNBC affiliate WBAL, Smith announced that he was planning to push for a legislation that would ban Baltimore’s “epidemic” of panhandlers.
“I’m gonna let the world know my wife didn’t die in vain,” he said. “I see it everywhere I go. Sometimes people get violent when you don’t want to give.”
source: people.com
