ST PAUL, Minn. — More than three years after he was fatally shot on the roof of a Uptown parking ramp, a recently recovered video could shed new light on the death of Winston Smith.
The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) announced Tuesday that a phone recovered from the scene after Smith was fatally shot on June 3, 2021, by members of a multi-agency violent crime task force was finally accessed using special unlocking software.
The 32-year-old Smith was wanted on a warrant for being a felon in possession of a firearm and had reportedly told people he would not return to jail. Officers involved in the incident insisted Smith fired on them as they attempted to arrest him, and a gun was subsequently recovered from his vehicle.
During an interview following the shooting of Smith, his girlfriend reportedly told BCA agents he was trying to get a Facebook livestream or video going in the moments before he was killed.
BCA agents tried to open Smith's phone in 2021 using the best available technology at the time but were unable to unlock it and confirm a video of the actual shooting existed. The potential criminal case against the task force members who shot Smith was forwarded to a special prosecutor by the Hennepin County Attorney's Office due to a potential conflict of interest. Ultimately, the Crow Wing County Attorney's Office declined to prosecute the officers.
In a release announcing the development, the BCA says that after learning "another entity" may have accessed the phone and recovered the video, agents obtained Smith's phone from an evidence lockup and installed updated unlocking software. After attempting more than 780,000 different password combinations, the software unlocked the phone on Nov. 21, allowing BCA digital evidence examiners to access the video and independently confirm that it indeed captures the fatal shooting of Smith.
The release did not comment on the sequence of events or potential evidence contained in the video.
“Our accredited digital evidence laboratory uses the most advanced unlocking software available to law enforcement,” said BCA Superintendent Drew Evans. “Lawful access to evidence that is thwarted by evolving encryption technology is a constant challenge.”
The video and associated reports have now been forwarded to the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office, which is reviewing the case file. Once that review is complete the video recovered from Winston Smith's phone will be made public.