Football coach shot & killed in his own home, robbed for $7,000 by his own nephew

Sometimes you know you shouldn’t do things for people, but it’s family… So you show them love anyway.

Miami, Florida – On Thursday, a 15-year-old boy introduced himself to a murder charge in the criminal justice system. Charles Alexander confessed to fatally shooting his uncle, a beloved Miami high school football coach, while staying over his house and robbing him of $7,000 in cash, police said.

Alexander, who is said to have a history of mental illness, has been charged with second-degree murder and armed grand theft in the killing of 46-year-old Corey Smith on Monday.

Charles called his uncle Corey and asked if he could stay over at his West Little River home. Charles said YES, to his nephew and had no idea that decision would cost him his life.

‘He asked to come over,’ Corey’s wife, Amina Smith, said.

‘We hadn’t seen him since his dad passed. Corey picked him up Sunday night and he spent the night.

‘I left to go to work.’

Police were called to Smith’s home after at least three gunshots were heard by neighbors.

When investigators interviewed the teen, he told them he was studying at the time of the shooting. After being interviewed for several hours by Miami-Dade Police Department, Alexander was allowed to go home.

THE CONFESSION

Charles Alexander had seemingly got away with murder. But he had to tell somebody…

Two days later, Charle’s mother called the police and asked to speak to them.

According to investigators, she was ‘in fear of the defendant’ and said that her son ‘confessed to her that he had killed his uncle.’

A gun belonging to the deceased Corey Smith was found in the garbage can on the side of the house, and ballistics confirmed the spent shell casings were fired from the gun. They also recovered a sum $7,450.

Charles used the football coach’s own 9mm Beretta handgun and shot Smith dead in a den, according to police.

ABOUT CHARLES’S DAD

Charles Alexander is the son of 41-year-old Lamar Alexander, a convicted felon who was shot and killed after carjacking a UPS truck and leading police on a high-speed chase last November.

Alexander and another ex-con, Ronnie Jerome Hill, 41, who took part in the armed robbery of of a jewelry store, and stole a UPS truck to get away. , were killed.

The UPS driver they took hostage, Frank Ordonez, 27, and another motorist who happened to be in the area, Richard Cutshaw, 70, were also killed.

The entire incident was caught on television.

Charles Smith and Lamar Alexander were technically cousins, but they were so close growing up that they were seen as brothers.

Alexander’s son, Charles, was thus considered Corey’s nephew.

‘In life, you gotta make better decisions,’ Corey said of Lamar the day after the hostage shootout.

‘We weren’t raised like that. I love my brother, but he’s been making bad decisions his whole life.’

Smith’s loss is a blow to the community, which knew him as the head coach of the Miami Senior High School football team.

PROBLEM CHILD

Charles Alexander has had a difficult recent past that includes run-ins with the law.

In May 2018, he was arrested for allegedly making a bomb threat at a middle school in Allapattah.

Investigators said school administrators received ‘numerous phone calls’ stating that a bomb would be detonated unless the school was evacuated.

The phone calls were traced to a phone on campus. Charles Alexander and two others were arrested.

THE DEFENSE

According to the Daily Mail, Charles’ case, which was brought before juvenile court, stalled due to mental health problems.

Alexander was four times declared incompetent to stand trial.

‘There are many juveniles who also suffer from early childhood trauma, learning deficiencies, and mental illness and the criminal justice system, can no longer afford to allow them to fall through the cracks,’ Alexander’s attorney, Rod Vereen, told the Herald.

‘If the allegations are proven true, that my client committed this unfortunate crime, then here’s a prime example of the system failing this child.

‘Should he have been involuntary committed over the past couple of years, so he would not have been a danger to the community?

‘Coach Smith would still be alive today, right?

‘If the facts are true, who failed whom?’ 

While this case can be blamed on mental illness, the truth is even mentally ill people know right from wrong. Which is why Charles lied to the police in the first place. If he didn’t know better he would’ve just told them from the jump, the way mother’s who snap out and kill their kids tend to just tell police that they heard voices or something.

Yet this generational trauma can also be easily related back to Charles father who had a history of violent criminal activity. Charles grew up thinking such behavior is the right way to go. He followed in his father’s footsteps.

Like father like son. In this case, a child is no better off having a father, vs a child with no father at all.

As a journalist I should also state that I noticed that when a black teen commits a crime, his mugshot is readily available to the media. But when the juvenile is white, it’s often just a story with no picture involved.