John Jefferson
Carly Gregg using her phone in the kitchen after gunshots heard inside home (Law&Crime).
Harrowing kitchen camera video played at 15-year-old Carly Gregg’s murder trial on Tuesday appeared to show the Mississippi teen hiding something behind her back and walking towards her bedroom just moments before the sounds of three gunshots and her mother screaming could be heard.
The video from the afternoon of March 19 showed that Gregg, then 14, was at the Brandon residence when 40-year-old Ashley Smylie, her mother and a math teacher in Rankin County, was fatally shot in the face, and that the defendant immediately after the shooting went to the kitchen and started using a phone, as her two dogs hovered around her.
Around the 45-second mark of the footage, Gregg, in a Nirvana T-shirt, could be seen peering into the kitchen, as if to check if someone was there, and appeared to be holding an object behind her back out of view of the camera. Moments later, the first gunshot is fired and Smylie let out two screams. Two more shots were fired.
Gregg then returned to the kitchen and started fiddling with a phone, possibly texting. Prosecutors have alleged that she used her mother’s phone to lure Heath Smylie to the house by texting “When will you be home honey?” and that she later shot him in the shoulder, before the man wrestled the gun away from her.
Carly Gregg leads around a corner and looks into the kitchen, seemingly to confirm no one was there, as her hands were behind her back (Law&Crime).
Prosecutors have also alleged that Gregg texted one of her own friends, B.W., to come over to the house claiming that there was an “emergency.”
Once the friend arrived, Gregg allegedly asked her “if she had ever seen a dead body before” before leading the witness to the victim’s body and saying her stepfather was next.
At the 1:50-mark of the video, Gregg left the kitchen upon hearing sounds of her mother dying. She returned a few minutes later and starting tending to her dogs. Nearly 50 minutes later, video from the garage showed Gregg running away after she allegedly shot Heath Smylie and struggled with him over the gun.
Gregg’s stepdad took the witness stand on Tuesday and spoke about finding his wife dead and surviving the shooting.
“She was laying on her back with her arms over here and a towel covering her face,” he testified. “I knew that she had been shot, there was blood around, I’m not sure exactly where, on the right side of her face.
“When I opened the door to the kitchen, the gun went off in my face before the door was three or four inches wide open,” Smylie said. “The gun flashed in my face. It went off two more times, but my hand was on the gun after the first shot, and I twisted it from Carly.”
Smylie also said Gregg, whom he remembered as a “sweet little girl,” looked as if “she had seen a demon or something” that day.
At the start of the trial, bodycam video showed Smylie telling law enforcement that his wife was dead inside of the house and that Gregg ran off after leaving the gun on the kitchen counter.
Carly Gregg (left) pictured during an April 16, 2024, court appearance in her mother’s murder (Jackson Jambalaya/ YouTube screengrab), Ashley Smylie (left inset)(Northwest Rankin High School), Carly Gregg (inset right) pictured in a mug shot (Rankin County Sheriff’s Office)
“She killed her mom!” Smylie said, adding: “She tried to shoot me!”
Gregg is on trial for murder and attempted as an adult after turning down a 40-year plea deal. The defense is pursuing an insanity defense, arguing that this is not a “whodunit” case but a “why did it happen?” case.
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