A Michigan father accused of gunning down his children after days of planning told police he was under severe stress about an upcoming sentencing from a previous conviction, investigators testified Tuesday. The September 11 shooting left his 17-year-old son dead and two younger children critically injured.
Jeffrey Smerer, 44, faces murder and attempted murder charges in the attack. According to Detective Grafton Sharp of the Port Huron Police Department, Smerer admitted during questioning that he had been “stressed due to the sentencing on his court case” for a 2020 indecent exposure charge and had been planning the shooting “approximately a week prior.”
Prosecutors said Smerer’s 17-year-old son, Kayleb, was killed in the shooting. His other children, Bentley, 13, and Kinzley, 12, were gravely wounded but survived. Police said Smerer then attempted to take his own life by cutting his wrists and ingesting “multiple forms of medication” kept in the family’s master bedroom, but was stopped by his wife and 19-year-old son.
Sharp testified that Smerer described his state of mind and his focus on the children before the shooting. “His reason was that he was closest to Kinzley and Kayleb. He also said that Kinzley was close to Bentley,” Sharp said, recounting Smerer’s statement that he intended to “take Kinzley, Bentley, and Kayleb with him and then shoot himself.”
According to testimony, Smerer retrieved his .380 pistol from a gun safe under his bed early that morning before waking the children for school. “He indicated that he woke up around 6:00 in the morning to his alarm, retrieved his .380 from the gun safe, which he keeps underneath his bed, and then proceeded into the bedroom of Kinzley and Bentley,” Sharp told the court.
After entering the room, Smerer allegedly greeted the children before pausing in the bathroom. “He talked to himself in the mirror,” Sharp said. “Questioning himself if he was really going to do this.”
Investigators said Smerer told them he shot Bentley while the boy was “underneath a blanket” on his cellphone, aiming at “the glow.” He then allegedly shot Kinzley in the throat as she was getting up and Kayleb in the head while the teen sat on a living room couch.
Smerer’s sister, Victoria Frazer, told ABC affiliate WXYZ that the family was shocked. “He woke up, woke the kids up to go to school, and you know, it was a regular day and something just happened,” she said.
The case has horrified the local community and raised renewed questions about firearm access and mental health crises among criminal defendants awaiting sentencing.