North Carolina Teen Killed in Instagram Drug Deal Shooting, Suspect Charged

An Instagram message that appeared to set up a small drug deal ended with 16-year-old Khamari Harrison dead on Fox Ridge Drive in Hope Mills, and police moved quickly to charge a 20-year-old suspect. Julius Smith was accused of murder after investigators said the exchange turned violent in the early morning hours and left a teenager shot in the street.

Officers responded to the shooting around 12:20 a.m. on April 25 and found Harrison with gunshot wounds. She was rushed to Cape Fear Valley Medical Center, where she died. What began as a routine call for a shooting quickly turned into a wider case, with detectives building a timeline around social media contact, witness statements and surveillance footage from nearby roads and a gas station.

Public records say Harrison believed she was going to buy mushrooms from someone selling on Instagram. Investigators said a 15-year-old friend later told them Harrison approached Smith’s car before several shots were fired. That detail helped anchor the sequence police were piecing together: online contact, a face-to-face meeting, gunfire, and a fast-moving escape route that detectives later tracked through video.

Smith was charged with murder, possession of a firearm by a felon and possession of a Schedule I controlled substance. Police also charged Brittany Grant as an accessory after the fact, and the 15-year-old friend of Harrison’s was charged with armed robbery and conspiracy. The case has already become a multi-arrest investigation, with each charge tied to a different part of the encounter that ended in Harrison’s death.

The age of the victim and the young ages of the people now facing charges have made the case especially stark. Harrison was 16, Smith was 20, and one of the other defendants was 15. Detectives say the shooting was not a random act, but the result of a drug deal arranged over Instagram that escalated in seconds into a homicide. The charges now move the case from the street to court, but the timeline that matters most is already fixed: a social-media contact, a brief meeting, and a fatal burst of gunfire in Hope Mills.