ST. LOUIS — Loretta Smith will always remember her two youngest sons Eric and Arron as inseparable.
They were born less than two years apart.
“They always was together, if you see him, you will see him, you see both of them together, they never were far apart from one another,” Loretta Smith said.
On the night of November 5, 2022, Eric called his brother when things got heated between him, his girlfriend, her twin sister and two of their friends.
“(Arron) told me, he said, ‘Mom, I’m going back. I’m going to pick Eric up and he was coming back over to my house,” Loretta Smith said.
She never saw them alive again.
Now, the double homicide case involving the two brothers from St. Louis recently went from being murder to self-defense.
And in the 14 months it took to get there, a main witness died by suicide, the family lost count of how many prosecutors handled the case, one of them withheld evidence from the defense, the top prosecutor resigned and the family believes a killer is getting away with murder because he is white. Eric and Arron Smith were Black.
The I-Team examined the evidence new prosecutors used to while deciding whether to dismiss the case, including the police report, autopsy reports, 911 recordings, a police interrogation and body camera footage from the scene.
It shows Eric Smith’s girlfriend, Kelsey Castro, called her twin sister, Kaylee Castro for help on the night in question, telling her sister her live-in boyfriend was beating her.
Kaylee Castro then headed to the house in the Bevo Mill neighborhood with her boyfriend, Austin Heflin and their friend Daniel Haffer.
Once there, Kaylee Castro called 911.
No one answered her first two calls.
During a third call she can be heard telling a dispatcher her sister was a victim of domestic abuse.
Heflin’s attorney provided pictures to the I-Team of Kelsey Castro’s bruised legs, torso and arms, all taken on the night of the shooting.
Here is a summary of what happened next according to the statements the group gave to police, according to the police report.
Arron Smith arrived, broke the window on the home and came in with a gun. The men let go of Eric Smith, and the brothers started beating Daniel. Kaylee Castro gave her boyfriend her gun, and he fired four times.
Autopsy reports show Eric Smith was shot once in his back.
Arron was hit three times, once in the head, and twice in the torso.
Body camera footage captured Kaylee Castro talking to a responding officer.
“I called before it escalated, and it took like 20 minutes for someone to get here,” Kaylee told the officer.
He then started scrolling through the list of pending calls on his in-car laptop.
“These are the calls that are going on right now that we don’t have people to go to,” he said. “That doesn’t make it right. I’m sorry.”
At the station, Kaylee Castro told police: “I'm scared, because I knew I wouldn't be able to do anything, like I've never been in this situation before and I knew my boyfriend would be able to protect me and us so I handed him the gun and as Arron was pointing the gun at us, my boyfriend shot,” she said.
She told police she knew Eric Smith had a gun, so she put it in her purse when she got there because she didn’t want him to use it.
“We weren't trying to start any problems, we were just trying to help my sister,” Kaylee Castro said.
Prosecutors under St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner’s administration filed murder charges against Heflin.
But they didn’t stick when prosecutors took the case to a grand jury, which reduced the charges to one count of involuntary manslaughter and one count of voluntary manslaughter.
That was one of the first blows for the Smith family.
“They just tell me that my baby boy get shot in the back, so he was trying to leave at the house to avoid all this,” Loretta Smith said. “You shouldn’t have to leave your own home for nobody.”
Then, in April, a judge sanctioned Gardner’s office for withholding 911 recordings and DNA evidence from Heflin’s attorney, Peter Bruntrager.
The DNA evidence showed Arron Smith’s DNA on the .45 caliber pistol the witnesses said he used to beat Daniel and Eric’s DNA on the gun Kaylee Castro told police she hid from him.
As part of the sanctions, Heflin was released on bond.
Another blow for the Smith family.
One month later, Gardner resigned under mounting pressure about how her office handled cases like Heflin’s.
Gabe Gore was appointed to replace Gardner.
And the trial was postponed to November.
Days before it began, Kaylee Castro died by suicide.
“Her testimony was crucial to this case,” Peter Bruntrager said. “We don’t know what occurred that led her to take her own life.”
The trial was then postponed until this month. Gore said his office re-interviewed witnesses, police officers and reviewed reports during that time.
Days before the trial was to begin, Gore’s administration dropped the charges against Heflin altogether.
“You tell me, how can he get off a case like this? How? There's no way. There is no way at all,” Loretta Smith said.
Heflin’s defense attorney said the law allows someone to defend themselves or another person with deadly force.
“Eric was the initial aggressor, Arron has then come to his aid, and they have escalated the force from a standard use of force to the use of deadly force,” Bruntrager said.
Gore says the evidence supports only self-defense, and he declined to speculate on why Gardner’s administration believed it was a murder case.
He also denied race was a factor in his decision to drop the charges.
“It's a tragic situation, and I understand that the family finds that a difficult thing to accept,” Gore said. “But it was the decision that we had to make in this case.”
Gore said he has no plans to refile any charges against Heflin unless any new evidence comes to light.
And he says he’s planning to meet privately with the Smith family later this week.
“My heart goes out to them, but I have to fulfill my obligations as circuit attorney, which are to look at the facts, apply the law, and make the best decision I can,” Gore said.
The only thing bringing comfort to Loretta Smith’s heart is knowing her sons are still together.