The Facebook of Dr. Michael Mammone’s alleged killer reveals details about his possible motivations for committing such a gruesome crime in broad daylight.
Around 3 p.m., on February 1, in Long Beach, California, a white Lexus plowed into Dr. Michael Mammone from behind while he rode his bicycle in the bike lane about a mile from where he worked as an ER doctor at Providence Mission Hospital.
The driver, identified by police as Vanroy Evan Smith of Long Beach, then exited the vehicle and stabbed Mammone multiple times before bystanders restrained him.
When deputies arrived, Mammone was suffering from multiple injuries and was transported to the hospital where he was pronounced dead. There was no known connection between Smith and Mammone, according to a press release by the Orange County Sheriff’s Office.
The suspect identified as 39-year-old Vanroy Evan Smith, was arrested, had past ties to both a sect within the Rastafari movement, the Twelve Tribes of Israel.
5 Fast Facts You Need to Know About Vanroy Evan Smith and Michael Mammone: https://t.co/yiivuXwWhB https://t.co/S6rD2kt7z4 pic.twitter.com/lQ2XjIGD90— Leslie Mack (@lesliemack) February 4, 2023
ABC7 spoke with a neighbor, who declined to speak on camera, who claimed to hear Smith yelling racial slurs and talking about white privilege. The Sheriff’s Office said its deputies did not hear this, however, this would have likely occurred before they arrived on the scene, and at the time of ABC7’s reporting, the race of the victim and perpetrator had not been identified.
Smith was a Long Beach accountant who owned his own firm, which he shut down shortly before the assault on Mammone.
His ex-wife, Marla Anette Hart, told The New York Post she recently feared for her own safety. His former father-in-law told The Post that a few days before the assault, police had been sent to her house to perform a wellness check involving Smith and that Smith had a history of “issues.”
Smith had purportedly closed himself off in the days leading up to the assault and told friend and former client Jo A. Gilliam he was okay but “going through some things.”
Heavy.com reported that Smith’s Facebook page revealed his ties to a sect within the Rastafari Movement called the Twelve Tribes of Israel.
Britannica defines the Rastafari Movement as a “religious and political movement, begun in Jamaica in the 1930s and adopted by many groups around the globe, that combines Protestant Christianity, mysticism, and a pan-African political consciousness.” On his Facebook, Smith suggested on November 4, 2020, that he was born in Jamaica.
He stated that his involvement in The Twelve Tribes led him “to take a look at Haile Selassie, the Ethiopian King whose Christian faith has always been fully on display; Marcus Garvey and the Negro Improvement Association; then Rastafarians, the group who ran ahead with Marcus Garvey’s teachings, and hail Haile Selassie as God.”
Although Smith posted frequently about his daughters, Gilliam told The Post that she was under the impression he hadn’t talked to them in a while.
In 2020, he frequently reposted NowThis News, a progressive social media-focused news organization. He also reposted former President Barrack Obama’s endorsing then-presidential candidate Joe Biden.
After George Floyd’s death, Smith posted frequently in support of the protests led by the violent Black Lives Matter Movement.
On June 9, 2020, he reposted a video from Lecrae—a Christian rapper who has frequently criticized America and white Christians. In the video, Lecrae suggested black Americans are in the same position as the Hebrews in Babylonian captivity, stating: “Psalm 137, they were angry with the Babylonians for the oppression and the torture they were put through. They were angry. We should be angry.”
If Smith murdered Mammone, and did so out of racial motivations as ABC7’s eyewitness testimony suggests, it would not be a first.
In June 2020—in the wake of the media’s anti-white, anti-America hysteria—a Wisconsin driver, Daniel Navarro, confessed to intentionally hitting motorcyclist Phillip Thiessen, a police officer and former Marine, killing him. Navarro told investigators he believed all Harley drivers were white racists and just assumed the rider had to be white.
The Orange County Sheriff’s Office has not yet released a motive for the attack.
