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It's because he was a protector that Smith was in the wrong place at the wrong time outside Swifty's Tavern at 1:30 a.m. March 15. Details from law enforcement officials are unavailable due to the open nature of the case, but his family said the 37-year-old, known to most as "Jolly," was trying to deescalate a conflict when he was shot and killed that morning. A suspect has been charged with murder.

It's also because Smith was a protector that his 18-year-old daughter, Jae'Anna Smith, lost hers when he died. During an interview with мÓƶà¶à¿ª½±¼Ç¼, she tearfully described her late father as someone who would do anything for her and her three siblings, 11-year-old twins Jae'Ssiest and Jae'Ssiah and 6-year-old Jae'Onnie. Whatever problems they brought to him, he made them feel better.

"I don't have that person to run to anymore," Jae'Anna said. "We could be stuck in the middle of nowhere and as long as I was with him, I wouldn't be scared because I knew I was going to be safe."

But Smith was more than a protector. Jae'Anna and other members of his family described him as an expressive soul who was young at heart, and whose loss is felt by just about everyone he met.

Born April 7, 1984, Smith grew up on the south side of Syracuse. His family was big, spanning eight siblings and 13 aunts and uncles. His older sister Tawanda Smith told мÓƶà¶à¿ª½±¼Ç¼ he giggled a lot as a baby, which is why his late mother, Annie Mae Holmes, gave him the nickname Jolly. He was a "momma's boy," Tawanda joked, loving Holmes dearly until she away in June of last year.

A year after Smith was born, he was joined by Kareem Davis, a cousin who became his lifelong best friend. As children, they played football together and developed a passion for hip-hop that would lead the pair to make music themselves. They grew up in the same beds, got in the same trouble and received the same discipline, Davis told мÓƶà¶à¿ª½±¼Ç¼. But nothing could bring his cousin down.

"He always wanted to have fun, always had the biggest smile on his face," said Davis, who moved to North Carolina after his cousin was killed. "He really was always Jolly."

Smith and his family moved to Auburn when he was a senior in high school. There, he met freshman Shawnna Williams. Her best friend was braiding Smith's hair, then asked Williams if she would do it. As she did, she started to like him because he made her laugh. Once she turned 15 that December, they started dating. That March, Williams told мÓƶà¶à¿ª½±¼Ç¼, she became pregnant with Jae'Anna.

The young parents got engaged, and welcomed their three other children over the years. They took some breaks, Williams said, and were separated when he died. But even then they remained close. 

That's not only because of their children, but also because nobody could stay mad at Smith. He tested that, his family said fondly, like when he would call Tawanda "Tolanda" or tickle Jae'Anna's ears. After his daughter got her learner's permit, he asked her to borrow her mother's car without permission and pick him up to buy snacks. "Don't tell Mom," he often said with youthful mischief in his voice.

Smith was maybe at his most mischievous on Halloween, when he would don masks and hide to give his children a loving scare, or on the Fourth of July, when he loaded up on fireworks.

"He always took over that holiday and made sure it was the best," Williams said. "More than Thanksgiving or Christmas, he'd go all out."

Sometimes it was more obvious that the motive for Smith's mischief was his family. He'd make messes so his children had to tidy up the house together, Jae'Anna said. Once, when Williams was away for Mother's Day, he grabbed money from her purse to pay for canoes on Owasco Lake. Jae'Anna remembers him clutching Jae'Onnie, scared by her siblings' talk of sharks in the water, the whole time.

Smith also wouldn't ask Williams before taking home animals, another love of his. From dogs and cats to mice and frogs, he wanted to rescue every creature he came across, Jae'Anna said.

Food wasn't safe from Smith's youthfulness either. A cook who once worked at the Dinosaur Bar-B-Que in Syracuse, he would mix unlikely combinations together and urge his children to try them.

"I'd tell him, 'I don't know how you do it. You make things that look disgusting but taste really good in the end,'" Jae'Anna said.

For all his adventures with food, fitness was important to Smith, as was faith. He didn't follow a particular religion, Williams said, pulling some beliefs from Christianity and some from Islam.

Those beliefs were reflected in Smith's rapping. Under the name Choppy, he explored the world around him, shared his ambitions and expressed how much he loved his family. He and Davis founded a label, Kings of Upstate, and made a studio of the latter's mother's attic. They traveled to make contacts in the industry, including a coastal road trip Davis called "the best time of our lives."

"Jolly saved my life," Davis said. "If I wasn't around him, I don't know what I'd be into."

Smith referred to men as kings and women as queens, his sister Teia Smith told мÓƶà¶à¿ª½±¼Ç¼. Jae'Anna was his princess. To her he passed on his passion for music, beginning when they would dance to Michael Jackson and hip-hop at her grandmother's house. But that passion extended to all creative expression. Even clothes, for instance, they would cut up and refashion with graffiti-style designs.

Jae'Anna will take that passion to Onondaga Community College, where she'll study art starting in the fall. She credits that success to her father, and his frequent words to her: "Do what you gotta do to do what you wanna do." In that way he was not only her protector, but her inspiration. When he died, and a GoFundMe was set up for his funeral, she was the first one to donate money.

"People said I shouldn't be doing that. But that's my Dad," she said, thanking those who donated money or food to her family. "He would do anything for me."