Cartier Smith was a 3-year-old boy found with a single gunshot wound inside a southeast Columbus apartment on Kodiak Drive after he accessed an unsecured handgun. Police and medics responded to an emergency call just before 9 a.m.; the child was taken to a hospital and pronounced dead at 9:51 a.m. Investigators determined the firearm had been placed between a mattress and the wall and was within reach when Cartier entered the bedroom that morning.

Detectives described the shooting as unintentional but preventable. The child’s mother, 29-year-old Carley Dials, told investigators she had picked the handgun up around 3 a.m., wedged it between the mattress and wall, and then returned to sleep; Dials was arrested and charged with involuntary manslaughter and booked into the Franklin County Jail with bond set at $50,000. Obituaries and memorials list Cartier’s date of death as September 22, 2025, while the police bulletin and emergency timeline place the shooting and pronouncement on the morning of September 18, 2025.

Did anyone in the Kodiak Drive area see or hear anything that morning, or have information about who brought the gun into the apartment?