Billings gunman who killed eight relatives at Sunday dinner identified as adult son told to move out weeks earlier

A 44-year-old Montana man opened fire on eight family members, four of them children, during a weekly dinner gathering, and relatives say he had been asked to leave the home just weeks before the attack.

Alan Smith arrived unannounced at his parents' Billings, Montana home around 6 p.m. Sunday, walked in on a family dinner, and began shooting. By the time he turned the gun on himself, eight people across four generations of his own family were dead, and the house was on fire. Police never got the chance to take him into custody.

The dead include Smith's parents, Dana and Barbara Smith; his 92-year-old wheelchair-bound grandmother, Evelyn Smith; his sister, Megan Ghekiere; and four children, Chloe Ireland, 7; Owen Ireland, 13; Charlotte Ghekiere, 12; and Landon Ghekiere, 15. The victims span a blended family that had gathered, as they often did, for a shared meal. The youngest was a first-grader. The oldest had lived more than nine decades.

Brad Ireland, the ex-husband of Megan Ghekiere and the father of Chloe and Owen, told the New York Post that Smith's parents had asked their adult son to move out "a couple of weeks ago." Smith had lived with them for several years, first in Seattle, then in Billings after the family followed his sister to Montana.

A 12-year-old called 911 while the shooting was still happening

In the middle of the attack, Charlotte Ghekiere, just 12 years old, managed to call 911 from inside the house. Police confirmed the call. She did not survive.

Jennifer Mercer, a family friend and neighbor, described Charlotte's actions in stark terms:

"The one thing we do know is that Charlotte was the hero. Charlotte called 911 and she tried to save her family. And that's something the family does want out there."

Charlotte's father, Adam Ghekiere, was not at the dinner. He was working as a rescue firefighter at an airshow when word came through a communication system that something had happened at the house. He rushed to the scene but was held back. Fox News reported the home was fully engulfed in flames by the time police arrived, and the area was still under active-shooter status.

Ghekiere described arriving and being blocked from getting closer:

"By the time we got to the house, they wouldn't let us get any closer because it was still under an active shooter status. I feared the worst right then."

He later told the US Sun what keeps returning to him. His daughter Charlotte had a habit. Every time he said "I love you," she answered: "I love you more."

Ghekiere did not hold back when describing the man who killed his wife and children:

"Monster isn't even enough to describe what he did."

Brad Ireland says 'many red flags' were raised, and ignored

Ireland, who now lives in Arizona, painted a picture of a man who had been visibly troubled for years. He described Smith as a "hermit" who had attended Eastern Washington University but had never been able to hold down a job. Smith spent nearly all his time alone in his room on a computer, Ireland said. No one in the family knew what he did in there around the clock.

Ireland was blunt about what he saw as a failure by those around Smith to act on warning signs:

"There were many red flags and many people spoke out. No one listened."

He did not specify in public statements what those red flags were, or to whom concerns had been raised. That remains one of the central unanswered questions. The Associated Press reported that Smith returned to the home unexpectedly on Sunday, and Ireland confirmed Smith opened fire on the family gathered inside.

The tragedy carries grim echoes of other recent family violence cases in which warning signs preceded lethal outcomes, and in which the people closest to the danger had the least power to stop it.

Some of the children were not supposed to be there that night

One detail makes the loss even harder to absorb. Adam Ghekiere said he believes Smith did not expect the children to be at the house that evening. The family typically gathered for their weekly dinner on Fridays, not Sundays. The change in schedule meant the children were present when Smith arrived.

Newsmax reported that the tragedy was compounded by the fact that some of the children were not even supposed to be at the gathering that day. Ghekiere's statement suggests Smith may have expected to find only the adults at home, though no official motive has been released by law enforcement.

Smith set the house on fire after the shooting, a step that complicated the investigation and destroyed the home where his own parents had lived. He then turned the gun on himself. The specific type of firearm used has not been publicly identified.

The case joins a pattern of domestic violence that too often ends in the worst possible outcome. Just weeks ago, a murder-suicide in Worcester, Massachusetts ended with a family member dead under similar circumstances, a reminder that the people most at risk from violence are frequently those who share a home with the person who commits it.

Eight lives spanning four generations, gone in minutes

The scale of this killing is staggering by any measure. Eight members of one family, from a 7-year-old girl to a 92-year-old great-grandmother, dead in a single evening. Four children who had no say in the adult conflicts around them. A sister who had moved to Montana and built a new family. Parents who had opened their home to a grown son who could not function on his own, and who, when they finally asked him to leave, paid for it with their lives.

The Washington Examiner noted the victims ranged in age from a 7-year-old girl to a great-grandmother in her 90s, spanning four generations of a single family wiped out in one act of violence.

The loss of children in acts of senseless violence is a wound that cuts across every community. The recent shooting death of a 12-year-old boy in the Bronx drew national grief for many of the same reasons, an innocent child killed before he had a chance to grow up, and a family left to carry the weight.

Law enforcement has not released a formal motive. No charges will be filed; the gunman is dead. The specific agency handling the investigation has not been publicly named in available reporting. The "red flags" Brad Ireland referenced remain undefined, who saw them, who was told, and what, if anything, was done.

Adam Ghekiere lost his wife, his son, and his daughter in the time it took him to drive from an airshow to a burning house. Brad Ireland, hundreds of miles away in Arizona, lost his two children and his ex-wife. Charlotte Ghekiere, 12, spent what may have been the last moments of her life on the phone with a 911 dispatcher, trying to save the people she loved.

When the people who are supposed to protect a family cannot even protect themselves from one of their own, the question is never whether someone saw it coming. The question is why nothing was done while there was still time.