Maryland woman Jacquelyn Smith asked her husband to pull over last week in a Baltimore neighborhood, after she saw a young woman holding what appeared to be a baby in her arms, and a sign asking for help. Her generosity and offer of $10 cost her her life, and her husband is desperate to find the people responsible for his wife’s death.
ABC reports that Jacquelyn’s husband, Keith Smith, recalled the details of the early Sunday morning stabbing that left his wife dead after she helped a young woman, who appeared to be in her early 20s. The woman was standing off of the off of the 1000 block of Valley Street in Baltimore on December 2, holding a sign that read, “Please Help me feed my Baby.”
Keith said the woman wasn’t actually holding a baby, but instead something wrapped in a blanket made to look like an infant.
“It was drizzling, it was cold, wet and my wife, like any normal person, felt sorry for the baby, which turned out not to even be a baby. It must have been like a stuffed animal or something wrapped in a blanket. From where we were, it looked like a baby and we thought it was a baby.”
As CrimeOnline previously reported, after Jacquelyn handed the woman money, a man approached the car and said he wanted to thank her for helping, but instead, tried to grab her purse and necklace. The pair struggled and the man stabbed Smith in the torso before fleeing the scene with the woman and baby. Smith was taken to the hospital where she was pronounced dead.
“As she was handing her the money, the guy came to say ‘Thank you,’ and the woman was saying ‘God bless you. God bless you,'” Keith told ABC. “While we’re looking at her saying ‘God bless you’ and my wife was handing her the money, he came over to the car and said ‘Thank you’ and then he started stabbing my wife and snatched her necklace off and ran.”
The woman grabbed Jacquelyn’s purse, according to Keith, and ran off. Keith said he doesn’t want to “beat himself up” over the incident, but he carries a bit of guilt since he was driving the car his wife was in when she go stabbed.
“I don’t want to beat myself up, but I feel somewhat responsible for letting that person get that close to my wife. It’s just a lot right now going through my mind. That’s why it’s hard for me to sleep because now I’m trying to see how I could have did things differently, how I could have took another street. I’m just thinking of all kind of ways that my wife would still be here.”
Police are currently searching for the suspects. The man is described a black male who stands around 6-feet-tall with a goatee. He appeared to be in his 30s. Authorities are also looking for the woman holding the baby, a black female wearing a brown jacket who appeared to be in her early 20s.
Anyone with information is urged to contact Metro Crime Stoppers at 866-7LOCKUP or detectives at 410-396-2221.
[Feature Photo: Keith and Jacquelyn Smith/Handout]
