Cause of death

Report: Troy woman found dead in Queens was killed by a gunshot to the head.

A Troy woman found dead in the trunk of a car in Queens last year was the victim of a gunshot to the head, a published report said.

Destini Smothers, 26, who was initially believed to have died as a result of a blow to her head, was the victim of a bullet, according to an interview her mother gave the New York Daily News.

The mother, Loretta King, told the newspaper a detective told her it might make her feel better to know her daughter did not suffer as much, but she did not agree.

“That don’t ease my pain,” the grieving mother told the Daily News. “It was like I found out my daughter was killed for the first time all over again. I had to relive that trauma.”

King told the newspaper she relocated from Binghamton to Queens and is staying with family to find answers behind her daughter’s death. She said the updated cause of her child’s death was the only update she has received from New York City police investigating the homicide.

“I cry myself to sleep every night,” she said. “My daughter is not resting because I’m not

resting.”

Her daughter celebrated her birthday on Nov. 3 at a bowling alley in Woodside, Queens, with her longtime boyfriend, Kareem Flake, and friends. She was expected to attend the funeral of his grandmother the next day, the newspaper reported.

King told the newspaper that she and her daughter were expected to meet up and shop the next day, but that her daughter did not show up to shop, nor did she attend the funeral of Flake’s grandmother.

The mother said her daughter and the grandmother had been close.

“I know she wouldn’t have missed that funeral,” King told the Daily News.

“I called his [Flake’s] phone and I said, ‘Where your other half at?’” King told the newspaper. “He said ‘Oh, she jumped out of the car mad because she wanted to hang with her friends.’”

“You just telling me she vanished into thin air?” she told the newspaper. “I know my daughter. My daughter and I are closer than close. It didn’t sit well with me.”

Police in Troy first became involved when a missing person call came from a friend of Smothers’ on Nov. 8. In March, the NYPD said Smothers’ body was found in a trunk of a car that was about to be towed from Lefferts Boulevard in South Ozone Park.

Smothers, who lived with Flake at 3016 Seventh Ave. in the North Central section of Troy, has two children with Flake, the report said. In November, police went to the apartment to perform a welfare check, but no one was home.

In December, NYPD homicide investigators came to Troy with search warrants for the apartment.