A 14-year-old Brandon, Mississippi resident, Carly Madison Gregg, is being prosecuted as an adult following accusations of murdering her mother and injuring her stepfather, authorities have said.
Police in Mississippi responded to an emergency call on Tuesday, March 19, just after 5 p.m., where they found a man suffering from a gunshot wound. The wounded man, later revealed to be the suspect’s stepfather, told officers that he had come home to find his 40-year-old wife, Ashley Smylie, dead. He claimed that his stepdaughter, Gregg, shot him in the shoulder, but he was able to wrestle the gun from her before she ran off into the backyard, scaled a fence, and escaped.
An arrest was made following a combined effort by on-the-ground officers and a Mississippi Highway Patrol helicopter, as stated by Sheriff Bryan Bailey. After being taken into custody without additional incident, Gregg was detained at the Rankin County Juvenile Detention Center, facing charges of murder and attempted murder.
The decision by a juvenile court to prosecute Gregg as an adult led to her transfer to the Rankin County Adult Detention Center. At her court hearing, Gregg entered a plea of not guilty. The judge set her bond at $1,000,000.
Ashley Smylie, the victim, was a well-respected math teacher at Northwest Rankin High School, where Gregg was a student. Before her tenure at Northwest Rankin, Smylie had been employed at Warren Central High School.
Lauren Martinez, a neighbor, expressed her shock, saying, “It’s hard to comprehend. You wouldn’t expect a child to do something like this. It feels as if something is awry. It’s a level of caution you wouldn’t think would be necessary.”
The investigation into the motive behind the shooting is ongoing.