One of four alleged gang members charged with a fatal shooting nearly five years ago at a central Toledo housing complex entered an Alford plea Monday morning to an involuntary manslaughter charge.
Kendall Hill, 21, became the second of the four defendants in the case of James Smith, Jr.’s death at the Moody Manor Apartments to enter a plea, although his was not an admission of guilt. The remaining two have plea hearings tentatively scheduled next week.
But Maggie Koch, an assistant Lucas County prosecutor handling the case, said in Lucas County Common Pleas Court that Hill was shown on surveillance video as one of five males who on June 24, 2020, all walked from a Moody Manor parking lot toward the location where Mr. Smith, 19, was shot in another parking lot, then were seen fleeing shortly after the gunfire was heard.
Bullets later extracted from Mr. Smith’s body matched .40-caliber and 9-mm handguns police recovered, Ms. Koch said. A camera trained on the crime scene, however, was not working that day, the prosecutor said.
Prosecutors and defense lawyer Joshua Williams agreed to a seven-year sentence for Hill’s conviction on the first-degree manslaughter charge, while a four-year term for participating in a criminal gang is proposed as concurrent time.
Judge Stacy Cook scheduled sentencing for Feb. 3, which is also the day lawyers for co-defendants Lamont Jones and Mytaveon Walls said during separate appearances Monday that their clients would likely agree to case settlements.
Judge Cook on Friday sentenced Keondre Baker, 20, of the 100 block of 16th Street, to an agreed-to 45 years for Mr. Smith’s shooting and the Oct. 29, 2022, shooting death of Ronald Thomas during an altercation on Grand Avenue. Baker pleaded guilty Jan. 17 to two counts of involuntary manslaughter and other charges in that incident, in which two other people were shot.
Baker’s 45 years included 18 years for convictions arising from Mr. Smith’s shooting.
Under his Alford plea, Hill did not admit guilt to any of the charges against him, but accepted lesser charges to avoid the risk of greater penalties should he be convicted at trial of his indicted charges, which included aggravated murder.
Mr. Smith had gone to the Moody complex, notorious for gang activity, to handle the affairs of his father, James Smith, 39, who lived there and had been one of two men killed two days before at the Ravine Park Village apartments in East Toledo. Police said at the time that those two men shot each other.
While at the Moodys, Mr. Smith got into a fight with Baker, Hill, and the others, who Ms. Koch said Monday had surrounded the front door to his father’s apartment and confronted him when he emerged. The fifth person seen in the surveillance footage, Ms. Koch said, has never been identified.
Police determined Mr. Smith hit Mr. Jones after Mr. Jones had tapped him on his hip with a gun during the confrontation, Ms. Koch said. Mr. Smith was then shot at least twice.
Search warrants were obtained for two apartments into which the suspects fled after the shooting, Ms. Koch said, and the .40-caliber handgun and two 9-mm magazines were found in basement rafters in one of them. That gun also had Baker’s DNA on it, she said.
The 9-mm handgun was recovered in a separate, later police incident, and the 9-mm slug taken from Mr. Smith’s body was matched to it along with “most” of the 9-mm shell casings at the shooting scene, Ms. Koch said.
After they went into the apartment where the .40-caliber weapon was found, Ms. Koch said, Baker, Hill, and Mr. Walls were driven away from the scene by Sierra Dotson, who is charged with obstructing justice in the case.
Hill, the prosecutor said, is known by police to have been a member for about four years of the Body Up Bloods, a gang affiliated with the Moody Manor Bloods that has been implicated in several other recent fatal shootings in Toledo. Hill also has recent convictions for weapons charges and failure to comply with police for which he has not yet been sentenced, Ms. Koch said.
First Published January 27, 2025, 8:45 p.m.
