A Missouri man was arrested late Monday for the early Sunday killing of his wife at their Hazelwood home they shared with two young children.
It was the couple’s older son that called the police at around 4:20 a.m. Sunday to report the tragedy.
“That there was an incident that occurred. And that his mother was, described serious injuries to his mother, and that he needed the police to come, and that his father was the perpetrator, and that he had left the scene,” Lt. Timothy Burger recalled.
40-year-old Gregory Smith III allegedly beat, stomped, and stabbed his 37-year-old wife Cristina Garcia before dousing the home with gasoline and fleeing the scene.
“I just hope they catch him, said neighbor Dora Chini while the manhunt for Smith was still underway. “It’s horrible.”
Chini recalled one encounter with Smith when she and another neighbor found his dog and tried to return it to him only to get threatened with an AK-47.
The children, an infant and a child under the age of 10, are being placed in the custody of their grandparents.
