Dianna Brice never learned she was expecting another son; five years later, her boyfriend was convicted and sentenced to life.
PHILADELPHIA, Penn. — Dianna Brice had already begun preparing for the child she was carrying. The 21-year-old mother had a gender-reveal celebration ahead of her and expected to learn whether her second baby was a boy or girl. She never reached that moment. Brice was killed while 14 weeks pregnant, and a Philadelphia jury has convicted her boyfriend, Justin Smith, of murdering her and their unborn son.
The plans Brice left unfinished form the human backdrop to a case otherwise dominated by forensic evidence, surveillance footage, cellphone records and a fugitive search spanning several states. Smith, 28, was convicted in August 2026 of first-degree murder in Brice’s death and third-degree murder of an unborn child. Jurors also found him guilty of arson, conspiracy, firearm offenses, evidence tampering and abuse of a corpse. Common Pleas Court Judge Anthony Kyriakakis sentenced Smith to mandatory life in prison without parole and another 40 to 80 years for the remaining offenses.
Brice was already raising a young son and worked as a caregiver. Published accounts said she hoped to train as a dialysis technician. Her pregnancy had reached the point where a gender-reveal celebration was being planned, but Brice had not been told the result. The child was a boy. Her family would learn that without her. Those facts were not evidence of Smith’s guilt, but they explained part of what relatives said had been lost when Brice died: a daughter, a mother, an unborn child and a future that had been moving forward until March 30, 2021.
That day, Brice was seen leaving a laundromat in Delaware County with Smith. Witness accounts and later testimony described her as upset. Prosecutors said the couple traveled toward Philadelphia while arguing. Evidence at trial showed that Brice had recently tested positive for herpes and believed Smith had transmitted the infection to her. Smith acknowledged the disagreement when he later testified in his own defense. Both sides agreed that the pair had argued, but they gave dramatically different accounts of how the encounter ended.
Brice soon stopped responding to her family. Her mother, Betty Cellini, tried to find her and communicated with Smith during the search. According to accounts of the investigation, Smith initially said Brice had gotten out of his car following an argument in West Philadelphia. Investigators developed evidence that contradicted the idea that she had simply walked away. Cellphone records showed Brice’s and Smith’s phones traveling together before Brice’s phone stopped providing location information.
At roughly the same time, detectives were examining another development: Smith’s Ford Fusion had been burned. What initially appeared to be a missing-person investigation was becoming more serious as police connected Brice’s disappearance with the destroyed vehicle and the movements of people close to Smith. Six days after Brice disappeared, authorities found her body in an abandoned area of Southwest Philadelphia.
The medical examiner determined that Brice had been shot 11 times in the head and once in the shoulder. Prosecutors handled those injuries not merely as evidence that she had been killed, but as a central part of their argument about intent. Smith would later tell jurors that Brice died accidentally during a struggle over a gun. Prosecutors argued that the pattern of wounds did not fit that account.
Investigators also gathered surveillance footage that documented what happened after Brice was last seen alive. Cameras showed activity around a garage in Philadelphia’s Kensington neighborhood involving Smith and his friend Tylydia Garnett. Footage showed Garnett carrying trash bags and later showed the two moving what appeared to be a heavy object into a Hyundai connected to Garnett, according to testimony. Prosecutors said investigators later found Brice’s blood in the Hyundai.
Other video evidence traced movements toward Southwest Philadelphia and the area where Smith’s Ford Fusion was burned near Cobbs Creek. Garnett was seen obtaining gasoline before the fire, according to the prosecution. Investigators recovered a fired cartridge casing from the damaged Ford. The Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office said forensic testing matched it to a casing found with Brice. Prosecutors used the finding to argue that burning the vehicle had failed to erase evidence tying it to the shooting.
Garnett was arrested in 2021 and eventually pleaded guilty to offenses related to helping conceal Brice’s death and destroy evidence. Years later, she testified at Smith’s trial. Garnett told jurors that Smith had admitted shooting Brice and described how she assisted him after the killing. The defense challenged her credibility, arguing that her own involvement in the crimes gave her reasons to testify in a way that helped prosecutors.
Her testimony was only one part of the state’s case. Jurors also heard about the cellphone movements, the surveillance recordings, the blood found in the Hyundai, the cartridge casings and the medical examiner’s findings. Prosecutors presented those pieces as independent evidence that reinforced one another. The defense, in contrast, tried to persuade jurors that even if Smith committed serious crimes after Brice died, those actions did not establish that he intended to kill her.
Smith took the witness stand and told the jury that Brice had a handgun during their argument. He said she pointed the weapon toward him and later toward herself. According to Smith, he grabbed for the gun and it discharged repeatedly. He testified that the firearm had been altered with a rapid-fire device. The defense argued that the modification offered an explanation for how several shots could be fired during a brief struggle.
Smith also acknowledged behavior that created a major problem for his defense. He did not call 911 after Brice was shot. He admitted helping dispose of her body and taking part in the destruction of his vehicle. Smith said he believed authorities would not believe that the shooting had been accidental. Prosecutors argued that his choices demonstrated something different: an intentional effort to conceal a deliberate homicide.
Smith then left Pennsylvania. Authorities issued a state arrest warrant on April 9, 2021. Prosecutors said he and Garnett traveled to Florida and that Smith hoped to reach Cuba but did not. He eventually made his way to the Atlanta area. In 2023, federal authorities charged him with unlawful flight to avoid prosecution, bringing the FBI into a search that involved law enforcement agencies in several states.
For Brice’s family, the years Smith remained missing meant the criminal case could not reach its central trial. Garnett’s case moved forward, but the man accused of firing the shots was not in custody. The delay stretched from Brice’s death in spring 2021 until Atlanta police encountered Smith in March 2025 during a traffic stop. Reporting about the arrest said Smith gave a false identity and fled before police captured him.
Once returned to Philadelphia, Smith finally faced the case investigators had assembled years earlier. At trial, Assistant District Attorney Lauren Crump argued that the physical evidence contradicted his description of an accidental shooting. She also asked jurors to consider the entire sequence that followed Brice’s death: no emergency call, concealment of the body, destruction of the car and flight from Pennsylvania.
The jury found that evidence sufficient to prove first-degree murder beyond a reasonable doubt. The verdict meant jurors concluded Brice’s killing was intentional and premeditated rather than accidental. They also convicted Smith in the death of the unborn child and on the offenses connected to the concealment of the crime.
For Cellini and Brice’s other relatives, the judgment arrived more than five years after the killing. Cellini said her daughter’s death left Brice’s older son, who was 4 at the time, to grow up without his mother. She thanked police, federal investigators and prosecutors who continued working on the case during the period when Smith remained a fugitive.
The sentence cannot restore the plans Brice had made for herself and her family. She never became the dialysis technician she hoped to be. She never attended the gender-reveal celebration. She never learned that the baby she was carrying was another son. Those were not courtroom exhibits in the legal sense, but they remain part of what her family says disappeared with her.
The criminal case has now reached its final judgment. Smith stands convicted of murdering Brice and her unborn child and has been sentenced to spend the rest of his life in prison without parole, followed by the additional term imposed for the crimes committed around the killing.
Author note: Last updated October 17, 2026.