“Have you ever seen a dead body?”
It’s the chilling question then 14-year-old Carly Gregg asked her friend after she shot and killed her mother, high school teacher Ashley Smylie, inside their Mississippi home earlier this year.
Carly told the friend to come over, claiming there was an “emergency” before revealing the horrifying situation, telling the friend: “My mom is in there.”
During the week-long murder trial, jurors heard how the teenager shot Smylie, 40, to death with a .357 magnum on March 19 when they got home from Carly’s school, Northwest Rankin High School, where her mom was a math teacher.
Prosecutors told the court that the shooting was carried out because Smylie had discovered her daughter’s “secret life” with drugs. They painted Carly as a dangerous killer who had “burner phones,” hidden vape pens containing marijuana, and a history of cheating at school and self-harm.
