Police identify Chasen’s killer

Nik S. writes:

Ronni Chasen, the Hollywood publicist who was shot to death on the night of Nov. 16 while she was driving home on Sunset Boulevard, was gunned down by Harold Martin Smith, an ex-con who police say was “down on his luck.”

When this story first broke a few weeks ago, it was a sensation—was it a Hollywood “hit-job” of some kind? etc.

No, it was just another case of a black guy being “down on his luck.”

When I’m down on my luck, I typically sleep a lot; I don’t go around shooting random people.

LA replies:

Smith is the man who killed himself as police were about to arrest him last week. His gun matches the bullets that killed Chasen. But the story still leaves a lot of questions unanswered, including the details of how the shooting was done, and how this low-level hoodlum was a marksman who was able to place multiple shots very closely together on his victim’s body.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at December 09, 2010 08:12 AM | Send