A family dinner in Billings, Montana turned into one of the deadliest tragedies the community has seen — eight relatives dead, including four children, in a single night.
What happened
Police responded to a home on the outskirts of Billings Sunday evening after neighbors reported hearing what sounded like gunshots, then fireworks, coming from the backyard. Within minutes, the house was fully engulfed in flames.
By the time officers secured the scene, eight people were dead — four generations of one blended family, ranging from a great-grandmother in her 90s who used a wheelchair, down to a 7-year-old girl.
Who was responsible?
Family spokesperson Jennifer Mercer and relative Brad Ireland identified the shooter as 44-year-old Alan Smith. According to Ireland, Smith had been living with his parents for years before they asked him to move out just weeks earlier.
He returned to the home Sunday evening — during what was meant to be an ordinary weekly family dinner — and opened fire before anyone had a chance to react.
"There were many red flags and many people spoke out."
Ireland said Smith killed his grandmother, his parents, his younger sister, and four children before setting the house on fire and turning the gun on himself. Investigators later confirmed one victim died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
A family torn apart
The children killed reportedly weren't even supposed to be there that night — the family's usual dinner night was Friday, not Sunday.
Ireland, whose ex-wife and two of his children were among the dead, is now grieving from thousands of miles away in Arizona. Mercer has since set up an online fundraiser to help the surviving family cover funeral costs.
Why it matters
The tragedy has reignited hard conversations about warning signs within families, access to firearms, and how households handle a relative in crisis — questions that, for this family, came far too late.
