Benji Martin Jr.
He walked into an emergency room in a mental health crisis. He is the one facing life in prison.
On November 8, 2025, Benji Martin Jr. — 29 years old, an East Carolina graduate, an artist and a dancer with no criminal record — walked into the WakeMed Garner emergency room in the middle of a mental health crisis. He went there for help. He left shot, in custody, and charged with murder. WakeMed officer Roger Smith died that night. Nothing on this page treats that as small. A 59-year-old man is gone and his family is living with it. What happened in the minutes between is contested. Benji's family and people who were in that ER say he was unarmed, that he never touched the nurses, that the officer put hands on his neck and drew his weapon first. The State's account of that struggle is different. Benji has not had a trial. He is presumed innocent, and that presumption is not a formality — it is the whole point. There is surveillance video of what happened in that room. In April 2026, the prosecutors and Benji's own defense attorneys filed a joint motion asking a judge to order it released. Both sides. Everyone with standing in this case has asked for that footage to come out, and it still has not. That is what this page is for. Release the video. Let a jury and the public see the room instead of arguing about it. And underneath that, the harder question this county has not answered: why does a man in a mental health crisis, walking into a hospital for care, end up in a struggle over a gun at all? Whatever the video shows, that part already failed before either of them got hurt.
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