By RUSS OLIVO

WOONSOCKET — After investigating the slaying of 17-year-old Brandon Smith for more than two weeks, police are no closer to solving the crime, Interim Police Chief Eric Croce said.

“It’s still being investigated but we really haven’t made much headway,” the chief said Thursday.
Croce said detectives continue to chase down leads and interview witnesses, a process that has been ongoing since Smith was shot to death outside his home on the night of June 25.
Witnesses said they heard gunfire and a frantic cry for help before Smith appeared on the concrete landing of his home at 45 Robinson St., gasping for breath. The youth died a short time later at Landmark Medical Center of a bullet wound to the torso that damaged his liver and heart, the state medical examiner said.
A detective lieutenant with the Rhode Island State Police who is on loan to the city, Croce tapped his ties to the state agency to call in a number of state police detectives to assist their counterparts from the Woonsocket Police Department during the early stages of the investigation.
“We hit it hard,” Croce said. “We were able to effectively double our manpower on the investigation.”
The state police are no longer assisting, said Croce, but they helped open up avenues of investigation that city detectives are still pursuing.
Initially, police theorized that Smith’s murder might have been drug-related, but Croce said police aren’t so sure anymore. A possible connection to narcotics trafficking hasn’t been ruled out, but there might have been another motive, Croce said, though he declined to elaborate.
 “It’s an odd thing right now, we can’t really focus in on one positive motive,” said the chief.
Smith had lived at 45 Robinson St. with his father and a family friend named Doreen Benjamin for several months. Family members described him as a well-liked, intelligent boy who had earned his GED after dropping out of Woonsocket High School and who talked about joining the Army or returning to school. He worked in construction with his father, Bruce Smith, and had a girlfriend.
But Ashley Smith, his sister, told reporters the morning after the murder that she worried about her brother’s welfare. She wouldn’t go into detail, but she said her brother had gotten involved with “bad people” and she had warned him that he would either end up dead or in jail if he didn’t make some changes in his life.