True Crime Society - Tawnia McGeehan killed her daughter before taking her own life in a Las Vegas hotel room

Tawnia McGeehan (34) shot and killed her daughter Addilyn “Addi” Smith (11) while they were in Las Vegas for a cheer competition. She then took her own life.

We first heard of this case as a missing person case and there was a lot of online chatter about it.

We learned that the mother and daughter were staying at the Rio Hotel but were last seen by members of the cheer team at New York New York at around 8pm on February 14, 2026.

Before we delve into the full story, we will start with some background on the people involved.

Tawnia was born on April 7,1991 in Salt Lake City, Utah.

We believe that Bradley Smith married Tawnia around 2014. Addilyn was likely born that same year. Her obituary does not list her birthdate but that is calculated by her being 11 in February 2026.

By 2015, Tawnia and Bradley were in the process of getting divorced. Bradley listed his wedding ring for sale on Facebook in August 2016 and wrote ‘I only wore the ring for a year.’

The divorce was finalized in 2017.

Over the next nine years, the couple fought over custody of Addi. It was originally agreed that Addi would live with Tawnia, while Bradley would have joint custody.

Tawnia was involved in five incidents involving custodial interference or electronic harassment between June 2017 and August 2020, according to court records. She pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor charges, which were later dismissed through a plea in abeyance, though a judge denied her request to expunge them from her record.

In another case, she received probation and a suspended jail sentence, while in a fourth, a misdemeanor charge was reduced to an infraction. In a fifth case, the charge she faced was dismissed.

In May 2020, the court issued an order to show cause directing Tawnia to appear and explain why she should not be held in contempt for allegedly failing to pay insurance costs and for denying parent-time. The order warned she could face sanctions, including up to 30 days in jail.

In December 2020, Bradley was granted sole physical custody on a temporary basis. The judge found it was in Addi’s best interest to change custody. The judge had concerns that Tawnia had engaged in behavior described as being on the spectrum of parental alienation and had committed domestic abuse in the child’s presence. The order also questioned her co-parenting skills and required that her parent-time be supervised by a third party at her expense,

Just to note, that Bradley does also have a record. His record includes a DUI in 2023, a few traffic offenses, and child support liens in 2015 and 2024, and a trespassing charge from 2013 that was dismissed.

In May 2024, a judge signed an order modifying the divorce decree, awarding the parents joint legal and joint physical custody on a week-on, week-off schedule.

Exchanges were to take place at the child’s school when in session, or at the Herriman Police Department when school was not in session. The order required the parents to park five stalls apart during exchanges and prohibited either from recording the child during those transitions.

“That’s a red flag,” one attorney said. “If you have to mandate five parking spaces, things are really having to be controlled here.”

The order also permitted the other parent to keep Addi overnight if one was unable to pick her up from school during the scheduled parent time.

Both Tawnia and Bradley were barred from approaching one another at school events.

The court ordered the two to ‘encourage and accept’ a positive relationship between Addi and the opposing parent and to keep their ‘personal conflicts’ away from the youngster.

They also had to make Addi available for FaceTime on Tuesday and Friday nights at 6pm. The parents were each given a 15 minute window to make the call or risk forfeiting it for the day.

The parents were forbidden from criticizing each other in front of Addi and banned from letting their relatives do the same in front of their daughter.

‘If a parent is unable to restrain a third party from making such remarks, that parent shall remove the child from the presence of that person’, the judge said.

The two were ordered to use the Family Wizard, an app which offers messaging between couples who share children. Bradley and Tawnia were told they could only text each other directly if there was an emergency involving their daughter.

Bradley was ordered to pay $288-a-month to Tawnia, and was in arrears totaling over $9,600 as of February 2024. It is unclear if he caught up on those payments.

There are 350 submissions in relation to the divorce and custody battle – most of them are sealed.

Bradley did remarry in 2020 to a woman named McKennly. McKennly made references online to Addi as ‘my daughter’ and she posted multiple photos of her.

Tawnia made multiple social media posts over the years about the situation.

As of 2026, Addi was a member of the Utah Xtreme Cheer (UXC) team. She and Tawnia traveled to Las Vegas to take part in a competition.

They were last seen by other team members on the night of Saturday February 14, 2026.

The following day, February 15, Bradley began to worry when he could not get in touch with Tawnia or Addi. At 10.43am, he called LVMPD dispatch to request a welfare check. Bradley told the dispatcher that nobody on the cheer team had heard from Tawnia or Addi and that he could not get hold of them. He said he had spoken with them the day before and everything seemed fine. Bradley told authorities that Tawnia had prescription medication but he did not believe she had a gun or any problems with illegal substances.

‘I’m trying to figure out where my daughter and her mom is.

‘They were supposed to be at a dance competition this morning. They didn’t show up. People went to their hotel room, they’re not answering the door.

‘They’re not answering messages or even seeing the messages. It’s very strange.’

Authorities went to their room and knocked on the door. There was no response. They knocked and called into the room several times, and still got no response. They spent around 15 minutes conducting the welfare check.

“They knocked several times, and they called into the room without any answer. At that point in time, without anything else and no other information and nothing else suspicious, those officers advised security, and they cleared from the call,” police said.

There was no reason for them at that time to think either Tawnia or Addi was in danger and they had no legal reason to force entry into the room, so authorities left the hotel.

It is believed Tawnia and Addi drove a vehicle to the Rio and the car was still in the lot.

It was around this point that the two were reported missing and missing person posters began circulating online.

This is info from online posts regarding the females being missing:

Útah Xtreme Cheer is asking for the public’s help in locating a missing athlete and her mother who were last seen in Las Vegas.

‘This is not the post we ever wanted to make, but we need the cheer community’s help/ At this point, we are extremely worried. Police have been contacted.;

McKennly, Addi’s step-mother made the following post:

“My daughter Addi and her mom [are] missing please share post and call or text with any information thank you!”

When Addi and Tawnia were still not found by the afternoon, another welfare check was requested.

A cheer coach called 911 asking for police, saying Tawnia had not shown up and said she “doesn’t necessarily have custody of her child.” The dispatcher told the coach they already had a request to check on them, but the coach called back a few minutes later, saying there were concerns Tawnia may have fled with Addi.

“Her mom has a bunch of medical issues,” the coach said. “They’re staying at the Rio, but no one can get ahold of them. We think the child, because she doesn’t have custody, we think the child possibly is in imminent danger. So – but the hotel won’t give us any information on if they’re in the room or not. It has to go through you guys.”

After receiving this information, hotel security went back to the hotel room and knocked. When they still got no response, they entered the hotel room. Tawnia and Addi were lying dead in the bed in the room.

“When they entered the room, they located two deceased females. They immediately backed up and called 911. Patrol arrived and secured the scene,” police said.

Tawnia shot Addi before taking her own life. There were no reports of gunshots being heard by other hotel guests.

A note was left in the room – as of the time of recording, the contents have not been made public. The note was said to have been pinned to the hotel door – presumably to the inside of the door.

Tawnia’s attorney James Watts spoke to the media about the note.

He said: ‘It is the family’s hope at some point that it will be returned to [McGeehan’s] mother, [who] would like to know what was being said at the time.’

A spokesperson from Addi’s cheer team made this statement:

‘With the heaviest hearts, we share the devastating news that our sweet athlete Addi has passed away.
‘We are completely heartbroken. No words do the situation justice. She was so beyond loved, and she will always be a part of the UXC family.
‘Please keep her family in your thoughts and prayers and continue to send them love as they navigate this unimaginable loss.
‘We ask that you respect their privacy during this time. Addi, we love you tremendously.’

Since the murder/suicide, there have been reports that Tawnia had been bullied by other cheer moms.

Tawnia had been sent ‘mean texts’ by “one or two” other women with daughters in the Utah Xtreme Cheer (UXC) team according to her mother.

“There’s one or two ladies that she never got along with, and it got really bad a month ago,” Connie McGeehan told the media.

“In the last comp they had, another girl got dropped and some of the moms were saying it was because of Addi. They were texting [Tawnia] mean stuff and blaming Addi.

“Cheer was her and Addi’s life. I think something happened the day before [they died] that made her spiral.”

Connie said that Tawnia had “struggled with depression her whole life,” but appeared to be “turning a corner,” recently. She said that Tawnia and Addi had been living with her in her seven-bedroom home in Salt Lake City.

“Addi loved her gymnastics, she loved her friends, she always seemed happy no matter what,” she said.

Connie said that Tawnia had been excited to attend the cheer competition. She had made gifts for other team members, bought new clothes and had posted photos of “Addi doing backflips” in their hotel room at 5 a.m. Sunday.

“They just looked like they were happy but then there was one pic of Addi and Tawnia together and I thought something doesn’t look like right. The look was off, something had happened. Something was off,” Connie said.

“We had no idea [Tawnia] was contemplating this,” she said, adding: “I thought she was doing OK, she’d been having some of the cheer moms over and making things with the kids.

Connie said she had no idea that Tawnia had a gun or that she had taken it to Las Vegas.

“[We’ve since learned] she bought it over a year ago,” she said.

A source close to UXC confirmed there had recently been a “confrontation” between Tawnia and another of the dance moms in the team waiting room.

UXC team owner Kory Uyetake told The NY Post he was aware there had been “comments back and forth” between Tawnia and some of the other moms, but that everything seemed normal on Saturday after the team traveled from Utah to Nevada for the competition.

Addi was in her first season as a member on the team and “loved it,” he said, adding she “was the first [to practice] every time … She was a beautiful girl and she didn’t deserve this.”

Since this incident, there has been investigation by the media into the ‘mean girl’ word of cheer moms.

This info is from the NY Post:

An investigation by The Post uncovered Facebook threads riddled with venom: moms accusing other children of “stealing” spots, threatening to report rival families to gym owners, and celebrating when rival competitors faltered.

In comments viewed by The Post, parents blasted judges as “corrupt” and labeled 10-and 11-year-olds “lazy.”

“So many of those moms are living through their daughters, their makeup is pasted on, their hair is so glued down, it looks like an old lady’s … Why in life does it have to be a ‘competition’? Let them have fun, laugh, positivity etc,” wrote one mom online.

Another mom from Nevada described Facebook groups where parents dissected children’s performances frame by frame.

“They’re 10. But you’d think this was the Olympics the way people act. If your daughter gets center stage, another mom is messaging three others about how the coach is ‘playing favorites.’ ”

Several parents claimed it was common for cheer moms to accuse each other’s children of “stealing” spotlight positions and to suggest certain families had inside influence.

“It’s like high school, but with credit cards and carpools. If you didn’t align with the dominant moms, your kid felt it,” said another Nevada mom who made the decision to pull her daughter from a competitive dance team last year.

“It’s not the girls who make it unbearable — it’s the parents,” an all-star cheer mom from Utah, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told The Post.

“The gossip, the jealousy, the group chats — it’s relentless.

One Texas mom told The Post she spent more than $15,000 in a single season.

“When you’re paying that kind of money, some parents start to see it as an investment,” she said. “And when the return isn’t a first-place trophy, they look for someone to blame.”

“I walked out of the gym with my daughter last year and never went back,” one woman posted.

Another mother wrote: “I just drop my kid off and head to the nail salon, so I don’t have to deal with any of it.”