A 14-year-old girl from Brandon, Mississippi, accused of killing her mother and wounding her stepfather, is being charged as an adult, according to authorities.
Responding to a distress call on Tuesday, March 19, shortly after 5 p.m., police arrived at a scene where they encountered a man with a gunshot wound. The injured man, later identified as the alleged killer’s stepfather, informed deputies that upon arriving home, he discovered his wife, 40-year-old Ashley Smylie, dead. He said that his stepdaughter, Carly Madison Gregg, had shot him in the shoulder, but he managed to take the gun away from her before she ran into the backyard, jumped the fence, and fled.
Sheriff Bryan Bailey indicated that a coordinated effort involving ground officers and a Mississippi Highway Patrol helicopter led to Gregg’s apprehension nearby without further incident. Following her arrest, she was lodged at the Rankin County Juvenile Detention Center on murder and attempted murder charges.
A juvenile court’s decision to try Gregg as an adult resulted in her transfer to the Rankin County Adult Detention Center. Gregg pled not guilty at her court appearance, with the judge setting bond at $1,000,000.
The victim, Ashley Smylie, was a beloved math teacher at Northwest Rankin High School, where Gregg was enrolled. Prior to her role at Northwest Rankin, Smylie worked at Warren Central High School.
“You can’t fathom those kinds of thoughts. You just wouldn’t think the child would do anything like this,” said neighbor Lauren Martinez. “It just feels like there’s something missing. There’s something wrong. It’s like a level of caution that you don’t think something like that would happen.”
The motivation behind the shooting is still under investigation.
