New toxicology results show Tawnia McGeehan gave her daughter Addilyn Smith a cocktail of prescription medications before fatally shooting the girl and herself at a Las Vegas hotel, capping a custody battle that lasted nearly a decade.
The Clark County Coroner's investigative report, obtained by the New York Post, lays out the final hours of 34-year-old McGeehan and her 11-year-old daughter in stark detail. Both died of gunshot wounds inside a room at the Rio Hotel and Casino. McGeehan shot Smith in the head, then turned the gun on herself. A semi-automatic pistol was found resting on McGeehan's chest.
Toxicology testing found five substances in Smith's system: quetiapine, gabapentin, lorazepam, diphenhydramine, and caffeine. McGeehan's own system contained nine, all five found in Smith, plus eszopiclone or zopiclone, citalopram or escitalopram, desmethyl loperamide, and cannabinoids. Gunshot wounds, not the drugs, were listed as the official cause of death for both.
The pair had traveled to Las Vegas for Smith's cheerleading competition. They were found side by side on one of the hotel room's two beds. Smith was wearing pajamas, her body tucked under a blanket, with a pillow bearing a bullet hole placed on top of her head.
McGeehan left multiple handwritten notes behind. One, taped to a chair, read: "Call 911 before walking in. Two dead bodies and one is an 11-year-old." In another note, McGeehan wrote that Smith had been "very medicated" before her death and that "she slept cuddled with" her mother.
McGeehan also left Smith's phone intentionally unlocked so that photographs and videos on it would be accessible. Police recovered prescription bottles bearing McGeehan's name from the room, along with THC gummies, gabapentin capsules, and a cup containing white residue.
Fox News reported that dispatch records show a welfare check was first requested around 10:45 a.m. after Smith failed to appear at her cheerleading competition. A note was found on the hotel room door at approximately 2:26 p.m., prompting fire officials to advise dispatchers of a possible suicide attempt.
Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department Homicide Lt. Robert Price confirmed the basic sequence:
"The mother shot her daughter and then shot herself."
McGeehan and Brad Smith divorced in 2015. The custody dispute over Addilyn stretched for roughly nine years. Court documents previously reported by the Post showed that 2024 filings indicated McGeehan appeared to retain much of the control over her daughter.
Fox News added that McGeehan temporarily lost custody in 2017 before being granted joint custody in 2020. The battle between McGeehan and Brad Smith was described as contentious for nearly the entire duration. Reports also pointed to bullying and tensions among cheer team parents in the weeks before the deaths.
Brad Smith was the one who called police for the welfare check. Valerie Krystine Muniz, identified as Addilyn's aunt, spoke publicly about the father's efforts:
"I have never known a man to love and fight for his daughter like he has done all of Addi's life. The system failed him and her."
That statement, "the system failed him and her", deserves more than a passing mention. Brad Smith fought for his daughter through a legal process that stretched across nearly a decade. He made the call that sent police to the hotel room. By then, it was too late.
Cases where a parent kills a child in the context of a domestic or custody dispute are not as rare as they should be. An Oklahoma influencer was recently found dead in an apparent murder-suicide weeks after accusing her husband of child sex abuse, another case where domestic conflict preceded lethal violence and the systems meant to protect families fell short.
The coroner's investigative report stated that McGeehan was "severely depressed over breakups and on-going custody battle with her ex-husband." Her family told investigators she had "a history of severe depression" and "past suicidal ideations."
None of that excuses what happened. Depression is real. So is the obligation not to harm a child. Addilyn Smith was 11 years old, a cheerleader with Utah Xtreme Cheer, in Las Vegas for a competition. She had no say in any of this.
Her cheer organization, UXC, released a statement after the deaths:
"No words do the situation justice. She was so beyond loved, and she will always be a part of the UXC family."
The toxicology findings raise their own questions. Five prescription substances in an 11-year-old's system is not a medical treatment plan, it is, on its face, evidence that McGeehan administered drugs to her daughter before killing her. The coroner's report describes it as a cocktail of medications. Whether those medications were all prescribed to McGeehan, how she obtained the firearm, and what the full content of every handwritten note said remain unanswered.
Family courts exist to protect children caught between warring parents. When those courts fail, when a parent with documented depression and suicidal ideation retains primary control over a child, and that child ends up dead, the questions that follow are not academic. They are questions about whether the institutions charged with safeguarding children are doing their job.
The Lindsay Clancy case in Massachusetts, where a mother is accused of killing her three children, raised similar concerns about mental health, parental custody, and institutional accountability. That case ended in a deadlocked jury and mistrial, leaving its own set of unresolved questions about how the legal system handles parents who pose a danger to their own children.
Brad Smith spent years in court fighting for his daughter. He was the one who sounded the alarm when Addilyn did not show up at her competition. The dispatch records confirm that timeline: 10:45 a.m. welfare check request, then hours of delay before the note on the door was found at 2:26 p.m.
By the time anyone opened that hotel room door, both McGeehan and Addilyn Smith were dead.
The coroner's report does not assign criminal responsibility, McGeehan is dead, and no prosecution is possible. But the documented facts speak clearly enough. A woman with a known history of severe depression and suicidal thoughts retained significant custody of her daughter. She traveled across state lines with that child, drugged her with multiple prescription medications, and shot her in the head.
Addilyn's aunt said the system failed. The broader national debate over parental violence keeps circling the same problem: courts that move slowly, warning signs that go unheeded, and children who pay the price.
No amount of institutional process matters if, at the end of it, an 11-year-old girl ends up drugged and shot in a hotel room bed, tucked under a blanket, in her pajamas, with a bullet hole through the pillow on her head. The system owed Addilyn Smith better than that.
