A Texas man who lured his father to his death under the guise of searching for deer meat was convicted of murder.
Ryan Smith, 29, was found guilty of the January 24, 2022 murder of his father Cameron Smith. Smith asked his father to come into the garage to look for deer meat in a freezer. When his father did so, he repeatedly struck him in the head with a 15-pound dumbbell, the Houston Chronicle reported.
After beating him, the younger Smith then tied a plastic bag around his father's head to suffocate him. Smith then placed his father's body in a garbage can, Law and Crime reported.
Smith's attorneys attributed the killing to insanity, according to the Houston Chronicle, and the jury in the case had earlier indicated they were deadlocked before convicting Smith Tuesday.
Two days before the murder, Smith had a run-in with police in which he had stabbed a police dog. Officers had responded to an attempted carjacking. Witnesses told police that Smith had attempted the carjacking and then gone to a store where he stole items and fled, police said.
Officers found Smith in a nearby apartment parking garage and he attempted to evade officers. A K-9 unit named "Nate" caught up to Smith and was stabbed.
"Officers provided emergency care to the K-9 'Nate' on scene. Smith was taken into custody without further incident and charged for his role in the incident," police stated.
Just two days later, Smith would murder his father in the garage.
During the trial, Smith's attorneys argued that he was in a medication-triggered manic state at the time of the killing, the Houston Chronicle reported. The defense presented two medical experts as witnesses. The attorneys said that Smith believed his father was no longer human.
"He didn't think what he was doing was wrong," defense attorney Gianpaolo Macerola, said, according to the newspaper. Prosecutors countered that Smith took steps to protect himself, such as cleaning up the crime scene, hiding the body, and removing the license plate from his vehicle.
When officers caught up with Smith, he was driving his father's GMC Denali pickup truck. The vehicle had its headlights off even though it was night and had no rear or front license plates, Click2Houston reported. Smith fled rather than pull over, and officers chased him for 15 minutes before he crashed the truck and fled on foot. He was eventually arrested in Austin County.
The station reported that inside the vehicle police found police found a loaded hunting rifle, a tent, and a bloody 15-pound dumbbell. Smith also had a black Labrador Retriever in the truck.
Originally published on Lawyer Herald
