PITTSBURGH — Family and friends of Samantha Howells gathered Friday morning to demand justice after she was shot and killed outside of her business in June of 2025.
“I had 15 wonderful years with her. That wasn’t enough. At all. I miss her so much,” said Samantha’s husband, Randall Richard. “She was my soulmate. She was everything to me. She was the glue that held my life together.”
Police say 19-year-old Israel Moseby shot and killed Samantha Howell outside of her towing business along Chartiers Avenue in Crafton Heights.
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According to court records, police were called around 4:30 a.m. for a ShotSpotter alert. There, they found Howells, who had been shot multiple times. Howells was taken to a hospital in critical condition and pronounced dead shortly after 5 a.m.
“For some spare change out of cars, this Israel Moseby took her life,” said Richard.
“She complied with everything he said. He had her at gunpoint. He walked her back to her car. She had a $15,000 ring. On she had cash in her purse. She had all kind of jewelry. They didn’t rob her, they didn’t take nothing from her. He shot her for no reason.”
Moseby was charged with criminal homicide, persons not to possess a firearm and carrying a firearm without a license.
However, Richard says they are frustrated with the countless pretrial delays.
“I have to build myself up to go to the preliminary hearings, because that’s the closet I’ll ever be to this kid. And it takes everything in me, all the strength in my body, to go there and not act out. And every time I get ready to go, the rug gets pulled out of me two days before the hearing,” said Richard. “He needs to be held accountable.”
On Friday, family and friends gathered in a lot across the street from the towing company, now renamed to Samantha’s Inner-City Towing in her memory. Photos of Samantha, and messages demanding justice were written on trucks that the family drove Downtown to the courthouse in their quest for justice.
The family says they cannot find any semblance of closure until Moseby is held accountable. Until then, the family reflected on Samantha, and the mother, wife, sister and aunt she was.
“She was the favorite aunt,” niece Kasey Hoffman said. “You’d walk in, and everybody would stop what they were doing. She was the one who would sit there and teach you recipes that she knew, or make the sweet tea that everybody loved, after asking 30 times. You call her at 2 a.m., she would get out of bed and just come sit and talk with you if that’s what you needed.”
“She was funny, she was outgoing and she always cared about people,” said Samantha’s mother, Cheri Randall.
“Sammy always took her kind heart, and came to me and reached out to me and called me and said, ‘Don’t worry about nothing,” said Tyler Schivins, Samantha’s nephew.
The family says, as of Friday, it’s been 163 days since Samantha was killed, and 155 days since Moseby was incarcerated.
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