Left inset: Jeffrey Smerer (WJBK/YouTube). Right inset: Kinzley Smerer, Bentley Smerer and Kayleb Smerer (GoFundMe). Background: The apartments where Jeffrey Smerer allegedly shot his three children (WDIV/YouTube).
A Michigan father admitted in court to the tragic shooting of his 17-year-old son and severely injuring two of his other children on the morning he was due in court for an alleged indecent exposure case, according to court documents.
Jeffrey Smerer, aged 45, entered a guilty plea on Tuesday in connection with the September 2025 shooting incident. Court records reviewed by Law&Crime indicate that Smerer, who also attempted suicide during the incident, chose to plead guilty without any plea agreement from prosecutors.
During the plea hearing, Senior Assistant Public Defense Attorney David Kelley asked Smerer if it had been his intention to shoot the children inside the home, as reported by the Port Huron Times Herald. Smerer, visibly emotional, confirmed this was true.
Kelley further inquired if Smerer also intended to shoot himself, to which he tearfully responded affirmatively.
The Port Huron resident had reportedly been planning the murder-suicide for a week prior to the incident. Smerer inflicted a wrist injury on himself and consumed various medications, which he had hidden in the master bedroom. Despite these efforts, he survived. Using a .380 handgun, Smerer fatally shot his 17-year-old son, Kayleb Smerer, and critically wounded his other children, 13-year-old Bentley Smerer and 12-year-old Kinzley Smerer.
According to the police report, when Smerer attempted to end his own life, the gun malfunctioned. His wife and 19-year-old son, who were present at home, managed to disarm him.
Cops questioned Smerer afterward about what was going through his mind before the shooting and alleged suicide attempt, and he allegedly told them he was thinking about an indecent exposure charge he faced in 2020 and was “stressed due to the sentencing.” Smerer said he believed he “might be going to jail” for the charge.
“He woke up, woke the kids up to go to school and ya know, it was a regular day and something just happened,” said Smerer’s sister, Victoria Frazer, in an interview with local ABC affiliate WXYZ after the shooting.
“He indicated that he woke up around 6 a.m. 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,” a police detective testified during a preliminary hearing last year.
After entering the children’s bedroom, Smerer said “good morning” and then walked into a family bathroom. “He talked to himself in the mirror,” the detective told the court during last year’s hearing. “Questioning himself if he was really going to do this.”
Smerer told police that he went back into the children’s bedroom moments later and started blasting, with Bentley being targeted while he was “underneath a blanket” and on his cellphone.
“He was aiming towards the glow,” the detective recalled Smerer saying. “Kinzley was getting up and he aimed at her throat and fired.”
Asked by cops “why he focused” on the children and chose to take their lives, the detective said Smerer claimed, “His reason was that he was closest to Kinzley and Kayleb. He also said that Kinzley was close to Bentley.”
Smerer said the plan was “to take Kinzley, Bentley, and Kayleb with him and then shoot himself,” according to the detective.
Smerer faces five life sentences after pleading guilty to one count of open murder, two counts of assault with intent to commit murder and two counts of first-degree child abuse. He also pleaded guilty to five counts of felony firearm use, which carry a penalty of up to two years in prison that must be served consecutively; all five charges can be served concurrently.
Smerer is scheduled to be sentenced on June 29.
