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Even though he is only 16, Malik Patience Smith was unfazed when he appeared in court Friday morning via closed-circuit TV.
He was there — technically a one-dimensional image on an aging screen not fit for a Super Bowl party — to begin the long process of answering charges filed against him connected to the shooting death last weekend of a 21-year-old Winston-Salem State University student, Najee Ali Baker.
Smith didn’t fidget or fuss, mostly spoke when spoken to and shut up immediately when his attorney told him to. He answered a handful of questions in a deep, flat monotone voice devoid of emotion, nerves or signs of fear.
He kept his cool even when Forsyth County District Attorney Jim O’Neill described him as “literally a menace to society. He is consistently in trouble. He keeps the Winston-Salem Police Department jumping because he can’t seem to put guns down.”
Perhaps remaining calm is in his nature.
Or maybe it’s because he’s been in this position before — at least two previous weapons charges have been brought against him — and fear of police, prison or being shot to death just doesn’t register.
That’s a hell of a thing to think about someone barely old enough to drive.
Keeping a crowd at bay
Courtroom 3B in the Forsyth County Hall of Justice is tiny, and generally used as the setting for first appearances, bond hearings and the occasional guilty plea to such goofball offenses as driving with a revoked driver’s license.
The elected district attorney usually doesn’t take the back elevator downstairs for such things. But State v. Malik Patience Smith is a different animal entirely.
Because of where the incident took place — on campus at Wake Forest University — and the fact that the victim was a college student, overriding public safety concerns demanded the personal attention of the guy in the corner office as well as the presence of the commander of the Winston-Salem Police Department’s criminal investigative division and the lead detective working the case for a bond hearing.
“When parents send their kids to college here in Winston-Salem, to Wake Forest, Winston-Salem State and the (UNC) School of the Arts, they expect their kids to be safe,” O’Neill said Friday in that bond hearing. “The same is true for Mr. Baker’s family.”
Early on Jan. 20, just after 1 a.m., outside an events center on campus at Wake Forest, Baker was shot to death. A fight had broken out inside, and partygoers spilled out the door as it grew.
Smith, another man identified as Jakier “Poppa” Austin, 21, and third man were seen entering the events center and leaving it when the fight started.
Smith was spotted going to a car to retrieve a gun and going back to the fight. There, investigators say, Austin shot Baker to death. A warrant charging Austin with murder was sworn out Wednesday.
“This defendant was seen by a Winston-Salem State football player who was with Najee,” O’Neill said Friday, referring to Smith. “He pulled his gun, sort of keeping the crowd and friends of Najee Baker at bay while (Austin) fired a shot at Baker. … This defendant pointed a gun at the crowd while a murder was taking place.”
Making matters worse, O’Neill said, was the fact that Smith has been charged twice since June 2017, with gun charges and was free on bond awaiting his day in court when Baker was killed.
A 16-year-old, charged twice before with weapons and drug charges, allegedly thought nothing of pulling a gun to keep a crowd back while another guy shot to death a 21-year-old college football player at a college party.
If that doesn’t scare the daylights out of you, nothing will.
‘Where he needs to be’
At the hearing Friday, O’Neill asked for bond to be set at $5 million. Smith’s defense attorney, Josh Simmons, argued that was way beyond the generally accepted ceiling for the crimes Smith was appearing to answer — possession of a handgun by a minor, assault by pointing a gun and possession of a firearm on education property.
“The maximum … is $15,000 and Mr. O’Neill is seeking to multiply it exponentially,” Simmons said.
Technically that’s true. But as Simmons no doubt is aware, a murder charge against his young client is entirely possible.
If Smith’s calm, cool demeanor during his televised court appearance is any indication, even the threat of a murder charge might not move the needle. He has been charged with gun crimes before, and while out on bond for one, he got popped for another and for good measure, charges related to trafficking in heroin.
“He’s not going to listen,” O’Neill said in asking for that $5 million bond. “He’s where he needs to be and where the community needs him to be.”
Even hearing Judge David Sipprell set bond at $100,000 didn’t seem to faze Smith.
Malik Patience Smith is barely old enough to drive a car. Yet after hearing some of the evidence arrayed against him in connection with the high-profile killing of a college student, he stood, waved and blurted out a greeting to his “lawyer man” before being led away from the camera.
“Are you listening over there, Mr. Smith?” Sipprell asked at one point.
Maybe he was. Or maybe he is too far gone to be afraid of police, prosecution, prison or worse