Javier Smith received 12 years in prison after pleading guilty to second-degree reckless homicide in the death of 15-year-old Azoria Jones.

MILWAUKEE, Wis. — A Milwaukee County Transit System bus passing along Silver Spring Drive recorded evidence that became central to the case against Javier Smith, a 17-year-old who initially denied shooting his 15-year-old girlfriend before admitting during a police interview that the gun was his and that it fired while the two were walking together.

The recording placed Smith and Azoria Jones together on the sidewalk at about 10:19 p.m. on Sept. 21, 2025, when the sound of a gunshot was captured and Jones fell to the ground, according to the criminal complaint described in court reporting. Investigators said the video showed Smith leaning over Jones briefly and then running away. Just as important to detectives, the footage did not show the vehicle Smith later claimed had approached them shortly before the gun fired. Smith ultimately pleaded guilty June 4 to second-degree reckless homicide and was sentenced to 12 years in prison followed by six years of extended supervision.

The surveillance evidence gave investigators an independent record against which they could compare several accounts Smith gave after Jones was killed. Police arriving near North 76th Street and West Silver Spring Drive found Jones suffering from a fatal gunshot wound. She was pronounced dead at the scene. The Milwaukee County Medical Examiner’s Office later identified her and ruled the death a homicide. In the first hours of the investigation, authorities did not publicly identify a suspect, and local police appealed for information about what had happened on the sidewalk.

Witnesses, however, had already supplied investigators with details about the moments surrounding the gunfire. One neighborhood witness told police that she had seen Smith and Jones walking together before hearing a shot. According to the complaint, she then heard Jones in distress and heard Smith telling her, in substance, to stop playing. The witness said Smith ran from the scene and did not answer when she called toward him and asked whether an ambulance was needed. Another witness told investigators she heard Jones cry out after the shot and heard Smith repeatedly ask whether she was all right before he fled.

Those accounts helped establish that Smith had been beside Jones when she was shot, but the transit recording gave police another way to examine what Smith later said had happened. The complaint said Smith first told investigators that he heard a gunshot while he and Jones were walking and then ran away. Police said his explanation changed during questioning and that he initially denied shooting Jones or owning a firearm. The progression of those statements became a significant part of the case as detectives compared them with witness accounts and video from the street.

Smith later described a passing vehicle and told investigators he believed someone inside was about to open fire, according to the complaint. He said he had his own gun tucked under his arm and that it discharged. He eventually acknowledged that he was the person who shot Jones and said he believed the bullet struck her in the chest. Prosecutors later pointed to the transit video because investigators said no other vehicle appeared in the immediate area during the moments before the shooting. The footage therefore did more than place Smith at the scene: It challenged a specific part of the explanation he offered for why he had been handling the gun.

Investigators also retraced Smith’s movements immediately afterward. Smith’s grandmother told police that Smith and Jones had left her home around 10:15 p.m. to pick up food. Within minutes, she said, Smith returned without Jones and claimed that someone had shot her. His grandmother called 911. That account became another piece of the sequence investigators reconstructed: the teens leaving together, the shooting being captured around 10:19 p.m., Smith running away, and his return to the house with a claim that placed responsibility on an unknown shooter.

Police identified Smith in part through Jones’ relatives, who knew him as her boyfriend. The complaint also included an allegation from one of Jones’ aunts that Smith had previously displayed a gun while the aunt was with the couple. Authorities arrested Smith on Sept. 24 at a family member’s residence. The arrest came three days after the shooting and after Jones’ relatives and friends had gathered for a vigil while police continued working to identify the person responsible.

During his interview, Smith also admitted disposing of the firearm, according to the complaint. Reports based on the charging document said he told investigators that he disassembled the weapon and placed or threw it into a sewer, although police also said he gave differing descriptions of what he had done with it. The reported disposal of the gun added another investigative issue because the weapon itself could no longer simply be recovered from Smith when he was arrested.

Prosecutors initially charged Smith with first-degree reckless homicide involving use of a dangerous weapon and possession of a dangerous weapon by a person under 18. At Smith’s first court appearance in September 2025, the defense characterized the shooting as an accident. Defense attorney Christopher Donovan said Smith was young, had no prior violent record and had not intended for Jones to be killed. Court Commissioner Barry Phillips questioned the response after the shooting, noting that Smith left Jones rather than remaining with her and immediately telling police that he had fired the weapon.

The eventual guilty plea narrowed the criminal case. On June 4, Smith pleaded guilty to second-degree reckless homicide rather than taking the original first-degree reckless homicide charge to trial. The weapons count was dismissed and read into the court record. The plea also meant the case no longer depended on a jury deciding between Smith’s early denials, his later account of an accidental discharge and the physical and video evidence assembled by investigators. By the time of sentencing, Smith had admitted criminal responsibility for Jones’ death under the reduced homicide charge.

The case illustrates how routine public infrastructure can become important evidence when an act of violence occurs in view or within range of a camera. The Milwaukee County Transit System bus was not at the scene as part of a police operation. It happened to be traveling past the teenagers. Yet its surveillance system supplied investigators with a time reference, the sound of the gunshot, images of Jones falling and Smith’s movements immediately afterward. Investigators were then able to compare those details with eyewitness accounts and with what Smith told them after his arrest.

That comparison was especially important because the earliest public information about Jones’ death was limited. Police initially reported only that a teenager had suffered a fatal gunshot wound near 76th Street and Silver Spring Drive late on Sept. 21. The medical examiner identified Jones the following day. By Sept. 24, police had arrested Smith. Prosecutors filed charges days later, laying out the evidence that investigators said tied him to the shooting. What began publicly as an unexplained sidewalk homicide had become a case centered on the person who had been walking beside Jones moments before she was killed.

Jones’ death also left a separate record beyond the court case. Friends and relatives gathered near the area of the shooting for a vigil two days afterward, while investigators were still working the case. At that point, the public did not yet have the account later contained in the criminal complaint. The legal proceedings that followed established Smith’s admitted responsibility, but they did not alter the basic fact that the victim was 15 years old and died on a Milwaukee sidewalk after going out with her boyfriend that night.

Smith, who was prosecuted as an adult, is now serving a 12-year prison sentence for second-degree reckless homicide. His sentence is to be followed by six years of extended supervision. The prosecution has therefore moved from investigation through charging, plea and sentencing, with the transit-bus footage remaining one of the clearest pieces of evidence documenting the seconds in which Jones was fatally shot.

Author note: Last updated September 21, 2026.