Kareem Flake was sentenced for killing Destini Smothers. (Towed car photo from Queens County District Attorney; Smothers’ photo from GofundMe; Flake’s mugshot from NYPD via New York’s WCBS-TV/YouTube)
A man who shot and killed the mother of his two children and hid her body in the trunk of his abandoned car after the couple celebrated her 26th birthday at a New York bowling alley was sentenced to 22 years in prison.
Kareem Flake, 31, was sentenced on Thursday after pleading guilty in July to manslaughter in the first degree in the killing of Destini Smothers, the Queens County District Attorney’s Office said in a news release. After he’s released, he will receive five years of post-release supervision.
“The depravity of this man’s actions left Destini Smothers’ family to agonize for months about her whereabouts and her two young children to grow up without a mother. I hope this sentence will afford some peace to Destini’s loved ones,” Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz said.
Smothers was reported missing days after being last seen in a car with Flake after celebrating her birthday in Queens, New York, on Nov. 3, 2020.
The family said on a fundraising page that they were raising funds to hire a private investigator to locate Flake, the last person who saw her alive and to support the care of their sons, then 11 and 4.
Flake told family members she jumped out of the car in the middle of the night during a heated dispute and hadn’t seen her since and did not know where she was, the site said.
Smothers’ mother, Loretta King, told the New York Daily News that when her daughter didn’t attend Flake’s grandmother’s funeral the next day, she called Flake to ask him where she was.
“I know she wouldn’t have missed that funeral,” King said. “I called his [Flake’s] phone, and I said, ‘Where your other half at?’” King said, the newspaper reported.
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“He said, ‘Oh, she jumped out of the car mad because she wanted to hang with her friends,’” King said. “You just telling me she vanished into thin air?”
Her remains were discovered about four months after she disappeared, on March 10, 2021, when a tow truck operator found Flake’s abandoned Toyota Camry that had a flat tire.
“Upon opening the car’s trunk to look for a spare, he discovered Smothers’ decomposing remains,” the DA’s news release said.
She had been shot in the head, officials said.
Flake was arrested on April 9, 2022, in Osceola County, Florida, and extradited to New York.
Smothers’ GoFundMe page described her as a loving mother.
“Destini Smothers loved her children more than anything,” the page said. “In family photos, she is often smiling and holding or kissing one of them. Videos of her show a bubbly, happy woman enjoying life with her children and family. Always dancing, singing, laughing …. that was Destini. Destini did not deserve what happened to her …. no one does. Her children do not deserve to grow up in a world without her.”
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