Nearly four years after Rebecca Payne was fatally shot in her Mission Hill apartment in 2008, Suffolk District Attorney Daniel F. Conley announced an indictment Sunday charging a man with first-degree murder in her death.

Cornell Smith, 30, who is now serving a 12-year prison sentence for a drug charge out of state, is accused of killing Payne in a home on Parker Hill Avenue in May 2008, Conley’s office said in a statement Sunday. Smith was formerly a Boston resident, according to the district attorney.

A building manager found Payne, a 22-year-old athletic training student from New Milford, Conn., dead in her apartment with gunshot wounds to her legs and chest on May 20, 2008.

Several neighbors said they heard shots just hours before Payne was found, but no one called police.

One resident of Payne’s building told The News on the day of the shooting that he “heard four to five shots” but didn’t call police because it was not abnormal to hear gunshots in his neighborhood.

Conley did not explain Smith’s motive for the alleged slaying, but he did note that Payne did not know her killer.

“She was, in every sense, an innocent victim,” he said in the statement.

The indictments, which were returned Friday, also charge Michael Balba, 55, of Billerica, with perjury for lying to a grand jury during the investigation, Conley’s office said. Smith also faces charges of armed assault in a dwelling and unlawful possession of a firearm.

No date has been set for Smith’s return to Boston to face the charges.