Carly Gregg cries in court as bodycam footage plays (Law&Crime).
A 15-year-old girl from Brandon, Mississippi, who most recently turned down a plea offer of 40 years behind bars cried after her trial began, at times wiping her nose with a tissue, as bodycam footage played in court just half a year after the alleged shooting murder of her mom and attempted murder of her stepfather.
Carly Gregg at the age of 14 is accused of fatally shooting her mother, 40-year-old math teacher Ashley Smylie, twice in the face, luring her stepdad to the scene by texting him from the victim’s phone, and then ambushing her stepdad when he arrived at the residence on the afternoon of March 19, wounding his shoulder.
Bodycam footage from the aftermath of the shooting played in a Rankin County courtroom on Monday showed an inconsolable Heath 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.
“She killed her mom!” Smylie said, adding: “She tried to shoot me!”
The defendant held her head in her hands and had a pained look on her face as the video played.
Gregg had a similar reaction to audio of her stepdad’s 911 call, where a dispatcher appeared stunned to learn that Smylie’s step-daughter tried to shoot him and that she was just 14 years old.
“She’s dead on the floor in my stepdaughter’s room,” the 911 caller said of Ashley Smylie.
The details in Mississippi’s case against Gregg were shocking from the start, as prosecutors in Rankin County claimed the teen opened fire multiple times after her mother “took some items” out of her bedroom at home, next invited a friend over to show off the victim’s body by claiming there was an “emergency,” played with and sang to her dogs in the meanwhile, asked the friend “if she had ever seen a dead body before,” and then told the friend there were “two for the head, one for the chest” waiting for Heath Smylie too.
Smylie fought back and grabbed the gun before Gregg fled the scene by hopping a fence, prompting authorities to track her movements by helicopter and arrest her a short time later. The stepfather has said Gregg’s “eyes were really big, like she had seen a demon or something to that effect” when the two struggled over the gun, the investigator said.
Left: Carly Gregg pictured during an April 16, 2024, court appearance (Jackson Jambalaya/YouTube). Left inset: Ashley Smylie (Northwest Rankin High School). Right inset: Carly Gregg (Rankin County Sheriff’s Office).
Before trial, the defense argued that Gregg heard voices while behind bars following her arrest and had started taking the anxiety and depression medication Lexapro, switching from a different medication, just one week before Ashley Smylie’s death. During opening statements, the defense conceded that Gregg was the shooter but claimed mental illness was the cause.
“This is not a whodunit case,” attorney Bridget Todd said at the start of her opening. The question Todd wants answered is: “Why did it happen?”
Calling Gregg an “exceptional child with no history of violence,” Todd said that her client “loved her mother,” and that Gregg herself is a victim.
“Evidence will show that Carly had been suffering from a mental illness,” Todd said, adding that Gregg, her mother and her stepfather “were all three victims” that day. Neither Gregg, nor her parents, nor her friends were aware of this illness, Todd said, and that illness is what took over that day. It was the same condition that her biological father had.
Heath Smylie saw that too, Todd said, emphasizing that Gregg’s stepfather has taken her side through the ordeal. He was so convinced by what he saw as terror in his stepdaughter that even after she shot him and ran out, he walked around the house looking for an intruder.
“While the events on March 19 were tragic, the events on March 19 were not intentional,” Todd said.
She also described Gregg as “hysterical” when she called her friends after shooting her mother, “begging them for help,” and not, as prosecutors argued, to show them what she had done.
Prosecutor Kathryn White Newman told jurors instead that Gregg had a “secret life” involving “burner phones,” hidden vape pens containing marijuana, and a history of cheating at school and cutting herself. Newman said that Ashley Smylie discovered what she believed were boxes of vape pens in Gregg’s room before the shooting.
Newman added that Gregg then lured Heath Smylie to the house by texting “When will you be home honey?” from her mother’s phone.
As trial inched ever closer in late August, the prosecution revealed that it made a plea offer that could have meant four decades in prison.
“For the record, what was the last recommendation of the State of Mississippi?” Rankin County Circuit Court Judge Dewey Arthur said at the start of the pretrial conference aired live by WJTV, after Carly Gregg got out of her chair and walked to the podium with a defense lawyer.
“The state recommended 40 years […] in the Mississippi Department of Corrections and agreed to nolle pros counts 2 and 3 of the indictment,” an off-camera voice said of the prosecution’s position, if Gregg had agreed to admit to murdering her mother, a Northwest Rankin High School teacher once honored as “Teacher of the Month.”
Gregg stated that rejecting the plea offer was her choice and that she understood she could face two life sentences behind bars if convicted.
“The jury will either acquit you or you’ll be facing two life sentences or this court can sentence you up to 93 years, do you understand that?” the judge asked.
Gregg, who was reportedly found competent to stand trial recently, confirmed that she understood.
“Yes, your honor,” she said.
Marisa Sarnoff contributed to this report.
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