More than three weeks after 28-year-old Garrett Smith was found dead in a car belonging to a local defense attorney, his family says they still have far more questions than answers, and they are growing increasingly frustrated with how the Mobile Police Department has handled the investigation.
Smith’s body was discovered on Aug. 14 in the driver’s seat of a dark gray BMW 328i parked along the side of the road near the intersection of Dauphin Island Parkway and Magnolia Lane. The vehicle belonged to Mobile criminal defense attorney Michael Wing, who had been traveling with Smith earlier that day. A construction worker in the area called 911 around 3:30 p.m. after finding Smith unresponsive inside the car.
According to Smith’s brother, Michael Smith, Garrett had spent the weekend before his death on Dauphin Island. He was told his brother left the island Monday morning to retrieve his truck in Mobile, though he said he does not know precisely when Garrett left the island or who he was with at the time.
By that afternoon, Michael Smith said he began receiving messages from friends and relatives about his brother, who by then had already been transported to Springhill Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead.
“Talking to the medic who was first on the scene, he said they did everything they could, but my brother never once had a pulse,” Michael Smith said. “He said he had been dead for a while.”
The family says several details surrounding Garrett’s death remain difficult to reconcile. Michael Smith said his brother was not wearing shoes when he was found and, despite having a 36-inch waist, was wearing size 44 shorts. He also said Garrett did not have his car keys, wallet or cellphone on him, which struck relatives as unusual given how attached he was to his phone. If Garrett was, in fact, being driven to retrieve his own vehicle, Smith said he cannot understand why his brother would not have had his keys.
The Mobile Police Department has said Smith’s death is not being treated as a homicide, though it remains part of an open investigation. Still, weeks without clear answers have left the Smith family feeling like the case isn’t being prioritized.
“We called the district attorney and told them we were going to get an attorney, and that was the first time we heard from the cops, really,” Michael Smith said. “We’ve tried to get [an autopsy report], but it’s not ready, and they’re saying it could be months before we receive a toxicology report.”
A police spokesperson said that “at this point in the investigation, there is no evidence to support that the death is criminal in nature,” but declined to elaborate further on the circumstances surrounding the case.
An incident report indicates investigators collected Wing’s BMW from the scene along with a laptop and what was described as “a green leafy substance believed to be marijuana.” No one, including Wing, has been charged with a crime in connection with Smith’s death.
Wing did not personally respond to requests for comment, but his attorney, John Brutkiewicz, offered the family his condolences, saying Wing was “grieving also for his friend.”
“There’s a lot of questions out there, but all those will be answered by the coroner’s report and toxicology report,” Brutkiewicz said. “There’s no use in anybody speculating. Let’s find out what happened, and the questions that everybody has will be answered.”
Aside from the marijuana reportedly recovered at the scene, no other drugs have been mentioned publicly in connection with the case, though court records show Garrett Smith was arrested in 2011 on a controlled-substance possession charge. Brutkiewicz has said that Wing did not use drugs with Smith and did not witness him doing so.
Much of the family’s focus has settled on the roughly nine-hour window between around 6 a.m., when relatives were told Garrett left Dauphin Island with Wing, and 3:30 p.m., when the 911 call came in reporting his body.
At least three people have described interactions with Garrett Smith on the day he died, and each said members of the media reached them before police investigators did.
Around 8:53 a.m. that morning, Smith called an employee at BMW of Mobile who said he was interested in selling a BMW similar in make and model to Wing’s. That employee, Mary Ann Castleberry, said she knew Smith’s father and had met Garrett at least once before.
“He was talking fast, which was unusual to me because he’d seemed kind of laid back before,” Castleberry recalled. “He said, ‘I’ve got a 2008, 2007 BMW I’d like to sell you,’ and said something like, ‘I can make some money, and you can make some money.'”
Castleberry said the number Garrett called from that morning was later confirmed to be a cellphone number used by Wing. She said an investigator with the Mobile Police Department contacted her the day after she spoke with reporters and pulled call logs from her work phone.
Security camera footage places Wing and Smith together around 9:27 a.m. at Griffith’s Service Station on Government Street in Mobile. Smith was wearing a bright red T-shirt with a swordfish on the back and greenish shorts, and the two men were traveling in Wing’s dark gray BMW. After buying gas and a Powerade, the footage shows the BMW heading east toward downtown Mobile.
Pamela Wallace, a certified nursing assistant who lives near Magnolia Lane, said she came upon the scene before 911 was called that afternoon, a version of events consistent with what another witness separately told Michael Smith. Wallace said she helped remove Smith from the vehicle and believed he was already deceased, describing signs of rigor mortis, which typically sets in between two and six hours after death.
Wallace said she saw a man near the scene who appeared to be around Wing’s age with similar white hair, though she could not say with certainty that it was Wing himself, only that “a friend of Mr. Smith was outside the car and was kind of hysterical.”
The Mobile County Communications District, which handles 911 dispatch for the area, confirmed the initial call came from a construction worker working nearby around 3:30 p.m. MCCD Director Charlie McNichol said a second call came in from another man in the area but was transferred to Mobile Fire-Rescue before dispatchers could learn what he needed.
For now, the Smith family says they are left waiting on the autopsy and toxicology results they hope will finally answer what happened to Garrett in the hours before his death.