Judge asked to force WakeMed to release fatal shooting video

The unanswered question is still what happened inside the WakeMed Garner Healthplex emergency department lobby when WakeMed campus police officer Roger Smith was killed, and now prosecutors and defense attorneys have joined together to ask a judge to force the hospital to turn over the video. The joint motion seeks unredacted surveillance footage from 6 a.m. to 11 a.m. on Nov. 8, 2025, plus staff and witness statements and related electronic communications, putting WakeMed, not the police department, at the center of the fight over what the public gets to see.

The footage matters because the sequence of events remains disputed in public view. WakeMed said Smith died after an encounter in the emergency department lobby, while Garner police said a struggle broke out before Smith was shot. Benji Martin Jr., 29, of Garner, was charged with murder in Smith’s death. Martin was also shot, treated at WakeMed, later released, booked into the Wake County Detention Center on Nov. 21, 2025, appeared in court on Nov. 24, and had the case continued to Dec. 15. CBS 17 also reported that Martin’s defense said he came to the ER seeking treatment for mental anguish after the loss of his unborn twins and asked that no consumptive scientific testing or digital forensics examinations be done without notice to the defense.

Smith’s death hit hard in Wake County because he was already known in local law enforcement. He served with the Knightdale Police Department from 1997 to 2013 before joining WakeMed Public Safety, and colleagues remembered him as kind and devoted to protecting others. His funeral at Providence Church in Raleigh drew a horse-drawn caisson escort and hundreds of officers, a show of honor that underscored how far the killing reached beyond one hospital lobby.

The legal fight turns on North Carolina General Statute 132-1.4A, the state’s law on custodial law-enforcement recordings. The statute says body-worn camera and other law-enforcement recordings are not public records, defines release as providing a copy, and routes requests through a superior-court petition process, the same framework readers have seen in fights over police body-cam footage. WakeMed says its Campus Police & Public Safety officers patrol Garner Healthplex and other campuses to protect employees, patients and visitors, which makes the hospital both a care site and a law-enforcement setting. That tension is only growing as WakeMed moves ahead with its Garner Whole Health Campus, planned to include a 150-bed mental health hospital and a 45-bed acute care hospital targeted for early 2029.