The defense has rested in the trial for a 15-year-old Mississippi girl accused of murdering her own mother — after a psychiatrist testified she has no memory of fatally shooting her mom.
Carly Gregg of Brandon, MS was 14 when the March 2024 shooting went down earlier this year. Her mother, Ashley Smylie, was killed — before her stepfather, Heath Smylie, was also shot at before Gregg allegedly ran from the scene.
On Thursday in court, Dr. Andrew Clark testified about interviews he had with Gregg months after the incident. He said that in the six weeks leading up to her arrest, Gregg started smoking marijuana; he also testified she had a troubled childhood but was a good student with good grades.
She allegedly told him that she started hearing voices around the ages of 6 through 9, which returned when she was around 11 or 12. He also said she told him she began cutting herself around the same time. In the months before her arrest, she was having trouble sleeping, was put on Zoloft, before being switched to Lexapro, while also smoking marijuana.
He claimed that just one week before the shooting, she wrote in her journal, “I think I had a psychotic break earlier. The whole ordeal was quite silly really, I spoke with one of the voices in my head … my particular friend and I were screaming bloodthirstily and ravenously.”
“She was having mood issues, eating disorder issues, cutting herself, hearing voices and sleeping difficulty, all leading up to January 2024,” he said, before describing the voices she allegedly heard.
“She told me the only thing the voices said to her were things that were kind of elitist, like, you’re better than those people,” he claimed. “So her mood is poor, the voices are getting worse, her sleep continues to be bad and she’s smoking marijuana 2-3 times a week. She’s also reporting she had a fair amount of anxiety during this time as well.”
He reportedly diagnosed her with Bipolar 2, which he believes was made worse by her Lexapro. He also said she had some kind of dissociative disorder … and didn’t believe the murder was a “well-planned out scheme.”
Of the day of the murder, Gregg allegedly told Clark she couldn’t remember anything that happened after letting the family dogs outside. She said her memory then continued after she was found by the side of the road by police after the incident.
Also on the witness stand on Thursday was Deputy Tony Shack, who reportedly shared bodycam footage with the court of him driving Gregg back to the scene of the crime after they found her on the side of the road.
As they get her out of the vehicle to test her hands for gunpowder residue, she says she doesn’t remember which hand she shot with while getting swabbed. She also asked one of the officers, “Is my stepdad okay?”
One of the cops then asked her, “Are you okay?” — before she replies, “Yeah, I’m fine.”
According to assistant district attorney Kathryn Newman, one of the teen’s friends was “so worried about Carly’s use of smoking marijuana,” and the girl using burner phones, “that he felt compelled to tell Miss Ashley Smylie that day.” Smylie was a teacher at Northwest Rankin High School, where her daughter was a student.
Per prosecutors, Smylie began searching her daughter’s room when they returned home from school that day and found vape pens. According to Newman, that’s when the teen went into her parents’ bedroom and grabbed a Magnum pistol from beneath the mattress.
Security video, meanwhile, appears to show Gregg walk from her parents’ room to her own bedroom — hiding something, believed to be the gun, behind her back. Audio then catches what sounds like a gunshot, followed by a scream and two more gunshots. Gregg is then seen going into the kitchen, where she immediately begins using a phone while also singing to the family dogs.
According to prosecutors, the teen’s stepfather began receiving messages from Ashley’s phone, asking, “When will you be home, honey?” — alleging Gregg is the one who sent those messages. The teen is also accused of reaching out to a number of friends, asking for help. One of them did respond to her pleas, and was allegedly asked if “she had ever seen a dead body before,” as well as whether the friend was “squeamish around dead bodies?”
Per prosecutors, Gregg then showed the witness the victim’s body — and claimed her stepfather was next — saying, “I put three in my mom and I got three more waiting for my stepdad when he gets home.” The friend allegedly was told to wait in the backyard, before she heard gunshots and saw Gregg running.
When Heath Smylie took the stand on Tuesday, he testified that when he opened the door to the kitchen of the home, “the gun went off in my face before the door was even 3 to 4 inches wide open, and everything kind of went pretty fast from there.”
Video from another camera shows him arriving home, before screaming from inside the house can be heard, including him shouting, “Carly!” Gregg is then seen running from the home, with Heath on her tail. “It looked like she was terrified … she was screaming out of her mind, scared, like she had seen a demon, or something,” he testified.
The teen was charged as an adult with murder, attempted murder and tampering with evidence. She reportedly rejected a 40-year prison sentence plea deal, with her defense team pleading insanity. In court on Tuesday, one of her friends reportedlytestified Gregg heard voices in her head both before and after her arrest.
The trial is ongoing.
