Florida police have arrested the boyfriend of an upstate New York woman who was found dead in the trunk of a car four months after she was last seen.
Kareem Flake was the father of two sons with Destini Smothers, who was last seen on November 3, 2020, leaving a Queens bowling alley — where she had been celebrating her birthday with friends — with Flake.
The 26-year-old Smothers, from upstate Troy, was in the city to attend a funeral for Flake’s grandmother, but she vanished two days before the service, as CrimeOnline previously reported.
Flake reportedly told Smothers’s family that the two had been arguing and that Smothers got out of the vehicle and left without her keys, purse, and wallet. The boyfriend insisted he didn’t know what happened to Smothers.
The New York mom’s body was found when residents of a Queens neighborhood began calling to have a car towed after it had been sitting on the street for several months. A tow truck operator popped the trunk and found Smothers’s decomposing body inside.
An autopsy later ruled her death to be a homicide caused by a blunt impact injury that fractured her skull and caused a brain injury.
The New York Daily News said that Flake was taken into custody on Thursday in Kissimmee, Florida, and that charges were pending his extradition to New York.
Smothers’s mother, Loretta King, told the Daily News she never believed Flake’s story and that his arrest hasn’t settled her.
“Once he is convicted, once justice is served and he’s brought to trial, that will be it,” she said.
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[Featured image: Destini Smothers/handout]
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