August 31, 2026
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Justin Smith, 28, was found guilty of first- and third-degree murder in the 2021 killing of 21-year-old Dianna Brice and her unborn child. He was sentenced to life in prison without parole on Friday.
A Philly man who killed his pregnant girlfriend and disposed of her body in an abandoned lot in Easwick five years ago was sentenced to life in prison without parole on Friday.
Justin Smith, 28, was found guilty of first-degree murder, arson, abuse of a corpse, tampering with evidence and other charges in relation to the killing of 21-year-old Dianna Brice. In addition to his life sentence, Smith was handed a consecutive term of an additional 40-80 years in prison, city prosecutors said Monday.
Brice was reported missing on March 30, 2021, after last being seen crying with Smith in his car while leaving an Upper Darby laundromat on the way to a medical appointment.
Six days later, Brice's body was found in a wooded area in Southwest Philadelphia wrapped in trash bags with 11 gunshot wounds to her head. Fired cartridge casings found in Smith's car were determined to match those found in Brice's clothing. At the time of her murder, she was 14 weeks pregnant with Smith's child and had a 4-year-old son.
Smith killed Brice in his car somewhere between University City and Kensington, prosecutors said. Cellphone records traced Smith's location to a garage in Kensington, where he enlisted the help of a friend, Tylydia Garnett, to dispose the body and evidence.
Garnett went to a Sunoco gas station to purchase a canister of gasoline and returned to the garage. The two were then captured on video loading a heavy object into the trunk of Garnett's car, later determined to be Brice's body, investigators said. Smith and Garnett then drove to an abandoned lot on the 5800 block of Eastwick Avenue to discard Brice's body before traveling to Cobbs Creek where they set Smith's car ablaze. The two later fled the city to Miami.
Garnett was arrested one month later and was sentenced to up to two years in prison. Smith remained a fugitive until he was arrested last year after giving a fake name to an Atlanta police officer during a routine traffic stop and fleeing the scene.
"This was a heinous crime carried out by this defendant, taking the life of not only Ms. Brice but of her unborn child," Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner said in a statement. "Justin Smith may have thought he got away with it, but he will now spend the rest of his life thinking about his actions."
During the murder trial, Smith testified that during an argument in his car, Brice held a gun to her own head. Smith said he was reaching for the weapon when it accidentally went off and killed her, the Inquirer reported. In addition to charges related to his crimes against Brice, the jury also convicted Smith of third-degree murder of his unborn child.
"I can't believe that it has been five years since he took my daughter and my unborn grandchild and left my grandson, who was 4 at the time, without a mother," Cellini said in a statement Monday. "We'd like to thank the prosecutors, the police and the investigators who never let this case go and fought for Dianna and our family."
