A man who had been asked to move out of his parents’ house weeks earlier returned unannounced on the evening of Sunday, August 23, 2026, and fatally shot eight relatives, including four children, as the family gathered for dinner at a home outside Billings, Mont., a surviving relative said.

Brad Ireland, whose former wife and two of his children were among the dead, identified the gunman as 44-year-old Alan Smith. The victims were Smith’s grandmother, his mother and father, his younger sister and the four children, and he set the house ablaze after shooting them, then tried to run before law enforcement confronted him in the backyard, Ireland said.

Investigators confirmed on Tuesday, August 25, that eight people died — four adults and four children — inside the home on White Star Circle, along with the suspect, who suffered an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound. Authorities have not officially released the names or ages of the victims or the shooter. Billings police said no one else is being sought and that the community faces no continued threat.

Three Minutes to a Firestorm

The 911 call reporting an active shooting event came in just after 6 p.m. on Sunday. Officers who pulled up heard gunfire cracking from behind the house and spotted a man standing in the backyard of the already-smoking residence. More shots followed. Three minutes after police arrived, the home was fully engulfed.

Billings Police Assistant Chief Shawn Mayo said the flames took priority once the fire was spotted, because they blocked any reasonable attempt to reach the victims. Crews could not begin suppression until the scene was secure, and the subdivision, which sits outside city limits, is not required to have fire hydrants. Billings Fire Chief Matt Hoppel said his firefighters had to work alongside law enforcement from positions that weighed the urgency of the fire against a live threat to responders.

Firefighters battled the blaze until roughly 1 a.m. on Monday, August 24, by which point the house had burned to its foundation. The suspect was taken into custody and transported to a local hospital around 6:48 p.m., where he died. All of the victims died at the scene.

Four Generations Around One Table

Those killed spanned four generations of one blended family, from a seven-year-old girl to a great-grandmother in her 90s who used a wheelchair, according to Jennifer Mercer, a neighbor and family friend who organized an online fundraiser and was authorized to release the details.

Ireland said his ex-wife, Megan Ghekiere, was killed along with their two children, 13-year-old Owen Ireland and seven-year-old Chloe Ireland. The dead also included the two children Megan gained through her marriage to her current husband — 15-year-old Landon Ghekiere and 12-year-old Charlotte Ghekiere — as well as Megan’s parents, Dana and Barb Smith, and Dana’s mother, Evelyn Smith, who lived in a nearby retirement community.

It was Charlotte who called 911. “The one thing we do know is that Charlotte was the hero,” Mercer said, adding that the girl tried to save her family and that relatives wanted that known. Mercer described the family as close and loving and said the parents stayed on good terms after their divorces.

A Father Working When the Call Came

Adam Ghekiere, an airport rescue firefighter in Billings and Megan’s husband, was on shift when word of an incident at his in-laws’ address crossed the department’s communications system. He tried the house, tried tracking his children’s phones and called his wife’s cellphone. Nobody picked up.

When he reached the street, officers held him back because the scene was still under active shooter status. Two hours after arriving, he learned his wife and children were dead. Landon and Charlotte were not supposed to be there; family dinner was usually on Friday. “I don’t think the shooter expected my kids to be there,” Ghekiere said. He blamed the killings on a family member’s growing grudge against his in-laws.

A fundraising page remembered Landon as a caring teenager who was quick to help family and neighbors, and described Charlotte as a girl on the verge of seventh grade who loved posing for photos. Friends have set up two GoFundMe accounts, one benefiting Adam Ghekiere and another for Erica Schneider, his ex-wife.

Red Flags and a Slow Investigation

The Smith family came from the Seattle area. Ireland said Megan moved to Montana with their children after the couple divorced six years ago and met Adam Ghekiere there; her parents followed, buying a house near their daughter’s. Alan Smith lived with them for years before they asked him to leave a couple of weeks before the shooting.

Ireland, who lives in Arizona, described his former brother-in-law as a hermit who spent his days in his room on a computer, and said many people had raised concerns that went unheeded. To his knowledge, Smith had never been violent, though he could be verbally abusive. Smith attended Eastern Washington University but struggled to find and keep work, and records checks in Montana and Washington showed no arrests or charges against him.

Interim Yellowstone County Sheriff Kent O’Donnell said on Monday, August 24, that investigators believe the killings began as a family disturbance, and he asked for patience, noting that the fire and the water used to douse it will slow the recovery of evidence. Jeff Stovall, a spokesperson for the Billings Police Department, said concerns about the structural integrity of the gutted house have complicated the work, and Hoppel said the cause and origin of the fire will be examined once the scene is declared safe. Yellowstone County is leading the homicide investigation with Billings police and multiple local, state and federal agencies.