Slain rapper Smoke Dawg’s dad missing in Caribbean
The father of murdered Toronto rapper Smoke Dawg has mysteriously vanished while on vacation in Grenada.
Smoke Dawg — real name Jahvante Smart — was killed in a brazen daylight shootout in Toronto’s Entertainment District on June 30, 2018.
Smoke Dawg did not have a criminal record. However, his missing father did.
Wayne Smart had a long criminal history for violence and was under a lifetime firearms prohibition. He was charged with second-degree murder in the July 26, 1999 slaying of Delroy Barnes, 30, during a gunfight in a townhouse near St. Clair Ave. W. and Runnymede Rd.
The shootout cost Barnes his life and Smart the use of his left eye.
Smart, 27, pleaded guilty to possession of a firearm while under prohibition and was sentenced to the equivalent of two years, considering his pre-trial custody, said Justice David Watt.
“He is disentitled to leniency … he has a cavalier attitude towards the courts and the law-enforcement community,” said Watt, as he rejected Robbins’ bid for a one-day sentence on top of time served.
“There is no evidence he fired the fatal shot. He had a handgun in plain defiance of a weapon prohibition and prior convictions for weapons offences,” Watt said.
Smart was confronted by Barnes and other men when the gunfight erupted. After being shot in the basement laundry room, Smart staggered north to Liverpool St., west to Castleton Ave., south to St. Clair Ave., where he collapsed in a gas station parking lot.
Along the way, he concealed the handgun in a laneway.
Crown attorney Phil Perlmutter said the prosecution is “unable to prove beyond a reasonable doubt who fired the weapon and whether or not it was fired in self-defence.”
At age 17, he was shot in the stomach at a nightclub in 1991.
Two years later, he was charged with first-degree murder after Landale Walters, 21, was shot through the basement window of a Shoreham Ct. home. Smart testified he fired his 9mm semi-automatic weapon five times in self-defence.
A jury acquitted Smart in 1994. A year later, Smart was acquitted of attempted murder in the shooting of another man.
He was also acquitted of a home invasion and another robbery.
