Eight relatives, four of them children, were shot to death as a family sat down to dinner at a home outside Billings, Mont., on the evening of Sunday, August 23, 2026, after a man who had been asked weeks earlier to move out of his parents’ house turned up unannounced, a surviving relative said.
The gunman was 44-year-old Alan Smith, according to Brad Ireland, whose former wife and two of his children were among the dead. Among those killed were Smith’s grandmother, his mother and father and his younger sister, along with the four children; after the shootings, Ireland said, Smith set the house ablaze.
Eight people — four adults and four children — died inside the home on White Star Circle, investigators confirmed on Tuesday, August 25, along with the suspect, who suffered an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound. No one else is being sought, and the community faces no continued threat, Billings police said.
At a news conference on Wednesday, August 26, Interim Yellowstone County Sheriff Kent O’Donnell publicly identified the victims and their ages: homeowners Dana Smith, 73, and Barbara Smith, 72; Megan Ireland-Ghekiere, 39; her children Owen Ireland, 13, Chloe Ireland, seven, Landon Ghekiere, 15, and Charlotte Ghekiere, 12; and family matriarch Evelyn Smith, 92, who did not live at the home but was there for dinner. O’Donnell named the shooter as Alan Michael Smith, 44.
Three Minutes to a Firestorm
Just after 6 p.m. on Sunday, a 911 call came in reporting an active shooting event. Gunfire was cracking from behind the house as the first Officers pulled up, and a man was standing in the backyard of the residence, which was already smoking. More shots followed, and the home was fully engulfed three minutes after police arrived.
The officers who encountered Alan Smith outside saw him retreat back into the house, and then heard more gunshots, O’Donnell said on August 26. “It wasn’t known [at the time] that he was actually the suspect of all this.”
Once the fire was spotted it took priority, Billings Police Assistant Chief Shawn Mayo said, because the flames blocked any reasonable attempt to reach the victims. Suppression could not begin until the scene was secure, and no fire hydrants are required in the subdivision, which sits outside city limits. Crews from the Billings Fire Department worked alongside law enforcement in positions that weighed the urgency of the fire against a live threat to responders, Chief Matt Hoppel said.
Multiple fires are suspected to have been set inside the 4,000-square-foot home, O’Donnell said. Because the subdivision runs on wells with no city services, he said, crews “had to haul in truckloads of water, set up a temporary tank, and pump out of that tank.”
The blaze burned until roughly 1 a.m. on Monday, August 24, leaving the house down to its foundation. Around 6:48 p.m., the suspect was taken into custody and transported to a local hospital, where he died. Every one of the victims died at the scene.
Sifting the ashes, a deputy recovered a “fairly intact” family photo album along with Barbara Smith’s personal Bible, O’Donnell said on August 26. “There are rays of good and sunshine that come through this.”
Four Generations Around One Table
Four generations of one blended family were lost in the space of an evening. The victims ranged from a seven-year-old girl to a great-grandmother in her 90s who used a wheelchair, said Jennifer Mercer, a neighbor and family friend who organized an online fundraiser and had authorization to release the details.
Among the dead were Megan Ghekiere, the ex-wife of Ireland, and the couple’s two children, Owen Ireland, 13, and Chloe Ireland, seven, he said. Also killed were 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.
The 911 call came from Charlotte. “The one thing we do know is that Charlotte was the hero,” Mercer said. The girl tried to save her family, she added, and relatives wanted that known. The family was close and loving, according to Mercer, who said the parents stayed on good terms after their divorces.
A Father Working When the Call Came
A shift at work was where Adam Ghekiere, Megan’s husband, was when word of an incident at his in-laws’ address crossed the communications system of the Billings airport, where he serves as a rescue firefighter. Calls to the house went nowhere, attempts to track his children’s phones failed, and his wife’s cellphone rang unanswered.
Officers held him back at the street because the scene was still under active shooter status. Word that his wife and children were dead reached him Two hours after he arrived. Neither Landon nor Charlotte was supposed to be at the house that evening, since 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.
On a fundraising page, Landon was remembered as a caring teenager who was quick to help family and neighbors, and Charlotte as a girl on the verge of seventh grade who loved posing for photos. Friends have set up two GoFundMe accounts: one benefits Adam Ghekiere, while the other is for Erica Schneider, his ex-wife.
Red Flags and a Slow Investigation
The Seattle area is where the Smith family came from. After the couple divorced six years ago, Megan moved to Montana with their children and met Adam Ghekiere there, Ireland said; her parents followed, buying a house near their daughter’s. Alan Smith lived with them for years, until a request to leave came a couple of weeks before the shooting.
A hermit who spent his days in his room on a computer is how Ireland, an Arizona resident, described his former brother-in-law, saying that concerns raised by many people went unheeded. Violence was not something Smith had shown to his knowledge, though he could be verbally abusive. Steady work eluded Smith, who attended Eastern Washington University, and records checks in Montana and Washington showed no arrests or charges against him.
Adam Ghekiere told The U.S. Sun of Alan Smith: “He was like a hermit. Megan’s parents wanted him to move out a few times but he just kept on sticking around.” He added, “It got to the point where his mom didn’t enjoy living in her own house with how he was acting towards them.”
Investigators believe the killings began as a family disturbance, O’Donnell said on Monday, August 24, asking for patience and noting that recovery of evidence will be slowed by the fire and the water used to douse it. Structural integrity concerns at the gutted house have complicated that work, said Jeff Stovall, a spokesperson for the Billings Police Department, and the fire’s cause and origin will be examined once the scene is declared safe, according to Hoppel. The homicide investigation is being led by Yellowstone County with Billings police and multiple local, state and federal agencies.
As of Thursday, August 27, crews had finished searching the rubble and all occupants who were inside the house were accounted for, O’Donnell said. He called it “an ongoing criminal investigation with eight victims, making this very complex.”