A pregnant Delco woman’s boyfriend has been arrested in her killing after four years on the run

Four years after Dianna Brice was found dead in a secluded, wooded area of Southwest Philadelphia, police say they have arrested the man who killed the pregnant Upper Darby native.

Justin Smith, 26, was taken into custody Sunday in Atlanta, hundreds of miles from the place where investigators say he shot Brice in the head, Philadelphia police said Wednesday.

He was arrested after a traffic stop, during which he fled from Atlanta police officers in his car and on foot. He was awaiting extradition to Philadelphia on Wednesday afternoon.

Smith was considered a suspect in Brice’s murder from the start, and police issued a warrant for his arrest not long after her body was found in April 2021. Brice, 21, was last seen with Smith at a laundromat in Yeadon, and the burned-out frame of a Ford Fusion registered to Smith was found a mile from her body, along with his wallet and car keys.

She had been reported missing by her family a week earlier. Her mother, Betty Cellini, told The Inquirer at the time that it was unlike her daughter not to contact her family for so long, or to leave behind her then-4-year-old son.

“I’m numb. I have no emotions,” Cellini said. “All I know is that at the end of the day, I want my daughter back.”

Brice had been dating Smith for about six months before her disappearance after meeting him through mutual friends, her mother said.

Cellini said she last spoke to Smith on the day her daughter went missing. She said he told her the couple got into an argument and Brice got out of the car at 57th Street and Springfield Avenue in West Philadelphia. He said he left her there and continued to drive.

On April 5, 2021, investigators found Brice’s body on 58th Street near Eastwick Avenue after tracking her cell phone. She was nearly four months pregnant.

Prosecutors said at the time that text messages between Brice and Smith showed the two had been arguing, and that Smith had accused Brice of cheating on him in the days before she disappeared.

Surveillance footage from the area showed that Tylydia Garnett helped Smith transport and dispose of Brice’s body, authorities said, and Garnett bought gasoline for Smith and drove him from the scene after he set his Ford on fire.

Garnett’s relationship to Smith is unclear, and Cellini said she didn’t know her and her daughter never mentioned her.

Garnett, 25, was arrested days later in Florida, where police say she had fled after helping Smith. She pleaded guilty to arson, abuse of a corpse, tampering with evidence, and related offenses in September 2023, and was sentenced to 11½ to 23 months in jail.