It was the first of August, and Laura Smith told her sister that she couldn’t take the abuse anymore.
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Smith had been married to Brian T. Smith for 30 years, the first 24 in Redlands and Yucaipa, while he worked as a California Highway Patrol officer in Baldwin Park, San Bernardino and the San Gorgonio Pass.
On this date, Laura Smith planned to tell her husband she wanted a divorce and leave with the adult son living in their home in Lake Havasu City, Arizona, according to her sister, Jean Gwaltney of Cave Creek, Arizona.
Gwaltney said her sister called her before heading to the house.
“In case he kills me, I want you to know my heart is right with God and make sure to tell my kids that they are everything to me and they were my life and I love them more than anything,” Gwaltney, 53, told a Southern California News Group reporter, recounting the conversation. “She said, ‘Don’t worry, I’m going to get out. I don’t think realistically he would do this.’ “
Twenty minutes later, Gwaltney said, her sister was dead.
Lake Havasu City police say Brian Smith, 60, and Laura Smith, 49, were arguing over the divorce on Aug. 1 when their son Matthew, 24, intervened and tried to de-escalate the situation. But Brian Smith grabbed a shotgun from another room and shot his wife several times, killing her, before killing himself.
The couple also left behind son Steven, 30, and daughter Taylor, 28. Matthew was the son of Brian and Laura; Steven was Brian’s son; and Taylor was Laura’s daughter.
Laura Smith had worked as a dental assistant years ago but mostly was a stay-at-home mom, Gwaltney said
“She was the most loving, most beautiful, most extremely smart, best mother and grandmother, sister, daughter and wife,” Gwaltney said. “Her children were everything to her, and that was her source of joy.”
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Laura Smith enjoyed fishing in Lake Havasu — her preferred catch was striped bass — and with her children at Yucaipa Regional Park. She also liked watching the off-road dune races at Glamis in Imperial County.
Brian Smith was well-known in the Inland Empire, Gwaltney said. He spent the first 20 years with the CHP as a motorcycle officer before patrolling the 10 Freeway corridor and other nearby state highways from 2014 to 2020, according to Gwaltney and Smith’s service record.
He resisted efforts to get him mental health assistance, Gwaltney said. She described him as often angry and mentally and physically abusive.
“He hid it very well,” Gwaltney said.
There was no life insurance, no survivor benefits, no will and no trust to help the children, Gwaltney said.
“He expected them to be able to handle everything on their own,” said Gwaltney, who established a fundraiser to assist the children.
Gwaltney said her sister stayed with her husband so their children would have a father in their lives. Gwaltney said she hopes that people reading about the family’s tragedy will “really see that Laura was an amazing woman and she thought she did all the right things by staying for her kids. She would die for her kids, which is what she did.”
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