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Teen Carly Gregg Melts Down, Gets Slapped With Life in Prison After Killing Mom in Chilling Murder

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The Mississippi teenager who was caught on video calmly texting her stepfather after murdering her mother wasn’t calm at all when she was sentenced for her crimes.

Carly Gregg, now 15, melted down Friday as a jury convicted her of murder in the March 19 fatal shooting of her mother, Ashley Smylie, and aggravated assault in the shooting of her stepfather, Heath Smylie, according to WAPT-TV in Jackson.

She was sentenced to two life sentences in prison, without the option of parole, the station reported. She also got 10 years for tampering with evidence, according to WAPT.

Gregg committed the crime after her mother found out she’d been smoking marijuana, according to WAPT.

The jury announced the conviction after only two hours of deliberation, the station reported.

The shootings took place in the family home in Brandon, Mississippi, the county seat of Rankin County.

The moments immediately before and after the shooting were captured on home surveillance video that showed Gregg, then 14 and apparently with a gun behind her back, going into another room. After shots rang out and a woman screamed, Gregg was shown returning to the camera’s view, picking up a cellphone and beginning to text.

WARNING: The following video contains deeply disturbing images that some may find offensive.

Do you think a 15-year-old should be sentenced to life in prison?

Prosecutors, according to the website Law and Crime, said one of those texts was to her stepfather.

Impersonating her mother, Gregg wrote: “When will you be home honey?”

When Heath Smylie arrived at the home, the girl shot him, too.

Gregg had turned down a prosecution offer of 40 years in prison in exchange for a guilty plea and instead attempted an insanity defense, Law and Crime reported.

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“Long week, sad day,” Bubba Bramlett, district attorney for Rankin and Madison counties said, according to WAPT.

“Carly Gregg is evil. That’s not easy to say, but the truth of the matter is sometimes evil comes in young packages, small packages — and this is one of those cases.”


Heath Smylie and Gregg’s grandparents were in the courtroom Friday. “They appeared to be mouthing words of encouragement to her,” according to WAPT.

Defense attorney Kevin Camp, who asked the jury not to sentence his client to life, called it a “tough case.”

“This was a tough case from the get-go,” he said, according to WAPT. “This jury had a very, very tough decision to make.”

But to Bramlett, the decision was cut and dried — tough or not.

“She’s fixing to go to prison for the rest of her life,” he said, according to WAPT. “You hate that. She’s 15 years old. But that’s exactly where she belongs.”

Gregg’s defense team plans to appeal, WAPT reported.

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Joe has spent more than 30 years as a reporter, copy editor and metro desk editor in newsrooms in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Florida. He's been with Liftable Media since 2015.
Joe has spent more than 30 years as a reporter, copy editor and metro editor in newsrooms in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Florida. He's been with Liftable Media since 2015. Largely a product of Catholic schools, who discovered Ayn Rand in college, Joe is a lifelong newspaperman who learned enough about the trade to be skeptical of every word ever written. He was also lucky enough to have a job that didn't need a printing press to do it.
Birthplace
Philadelphia
Nationality
American




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