Utah cheer mom drugged 11-year-old daughter before fatally shooting her in the head, turning gun on herself: coroner

A Utah coroner has ruled that a Utah cheer mom drugged her daughter before fatally shooting her and turning the gun on herself inside a Las Vegas hotel room in February.

The Clark County Office of the Coroner/Medical Examiner released its findings to the Daily Mail. The office found that both 38-year-old Tawnia McGeehan and her daughter, 11-year-old Addi Smith, died of gunshot wounds to the head. The office ruled Smith’s death a homicide, and McGeehan’s death a suicide. 

Investigators also revealed that the mother appeared to have drugged her daughter before killing her. A toxicology report uncovered a cocktail of drugs in the girl’s system, including Caffeine, Quetiapine, Diphenhydramine, gabapentin, and Lorazepam. 

Quetiapine is an antipsychotic, Lorazepam is an anti-anxiety medication, Diphenhydramine is an antihistamine commonly sold as Benadryl, and Gabapentin is used to control seizures, among other things. 

Investigators said that they had found a suicide note taped to a chair left outside their hotel room. The note read, “Call 911 before walking in, 2 dead bodies, one is an 11 year old.” Additional handwritten notes were found, including one that said Smith was “very medicated” and “slept cuddled” into her mother. 

The coroner’s report said, “[Addi] and her mother were both in one bed and the other bed appeared unmade and had miscellaneous items to include stuffed animals and a clear purse. There was an apparent defect in the pillow that correlated with the gunshot wound to [Addi's] head. [Addi's] mother was lying next to her. There was a Ruger 5.7 x 28mm handgun found on the mother's face and upper chest area.” The girl was found in her pajamas, covered by a blanket and pillow. 

The report stated that additional items found in the room included cannabis gummies, prescription bill bottles, and broken caspules that had contained Gabapentin. 

The toxicology report for McGeehan said that she had the same drugs in her bloodstream as her daughter, in addition to Citalopram, Eszopiclone and cannabinoids. Citalopram is an antidepressant, and Eszopiclone is prescribed to treat insomnia.

The coroner’s report stated that McGeehan’s family said she suffered with severe depression and had previously suffered from “suicidal ideations.” 

The mother and daughter had been in Las Vegas for a cheerleading competition. At the time of the incident, McGeehan had been in the middle of a contentious custody battle with Smith’s father. 

McGeehan and Smith’s father, Bradley Smith, divorced in 2015. Court officials issued a number of restrictions on the parents’ contact with each other, including ordering that they be parked five spaces apart during handovers and that when school is not in session, they complete handovers outside a police station. They were ordered to keep their “personal conflicts” away from their daughter.

While the two had initially agreed that Smith would live with her mother while the two shared joint custody at the time of the divorce, the court ordered in December of 2020 that Smith’s father be granted sole custody. The decision came after a judge had ruled McGeehan was subjecting her daughter to “behavior that is on the spectrum of parental alienation” and that the mother “has committed domestic abuse in the presence of the minor child.”