Man charged with murder in killing of security-company owner, police say

A 27-year-old D.C. man who was fired from a security company after he was accused of stealing has been arrested in the fatal shooting of the business’s owner last month outside a skating rink in the Temple Hills area of Maryland, Prince George’s County police said.

Omar Delonte Smith is charged with first- and seconddegree murder and related counts in the shooting of Eugene Smith, 31, of D.C. In charging documents, police said a witness told them that Omar Smith had been texting death threats to the company owner and that he claimed to have not received his last paycheck. Police said the two men are not related.

Omar Smith is in Richmond awaiting extradition to Prince George’s, police said.

The incident occurred just before midnight on Feb. 23 in the 3100 block of Branch Avenue, police said. Officers were called for a shooting, and they found Eugene Smith with gunshot wounds in front of a skating rink called DMV All Skate Social, police said. He died at the scene.

According to police charging documents, surveillance video from the business caught the incident.

The video showed a dark-gray, four-door Nissan sedan “slowly pulling in front of the skate palace.” The driver appeared to be the only occupant, according to the documents.

One witness told officers that they approached the vehicle and asked the driver what he wanted, but that the man did not respond. The witness said they had an “uneasy feeling” and walked back into the skating rink — passing Eugene Smith as they did so, the documents said.

The witness then heard shots, according to the documents.

Police said that Eugene Smith walked up to the vehicle and that “the driver reached out of the front passenger side window with a handgun and fired multiple rounds” at Eugene Smith, who had turned to run back into the skating rink. He collapsed in the doorway, and the man in the sedan drove off.

Multiple witnesses connected Omar Smith to the incident, describing him as a former employee of Eugene Smith’s security company, “Eugenius Protection.” He had been fired in January “for allegedly stealing, while working security at the skate palace,” one witness told police, according to the charging documents.

At a vigil honoring Eugene Smith in early March, Jacqueline Wiggins, the owner of DMV All Skate Social, said he had run security for the rink, where he had been employed for several months.

He was not working at the time of the shooting, and he had been at the skating rink to pick up payroll for his staff, according to Wiggins.

Eugene Smith, a father of five, was also a violence interrupter in Southeast Washington and had a “teddy bear”-like personality, according to friends at the vigil.

It was not immediately clear whether Omar Smith has an attorney.