In the beginning of their relationship, Brandi Smith of Conway said that her husband treated her like a princess and told her how gorgeous she was and that he was lucky to have her.
Now he’s in a Tennessee jail, charged with attempted first-degree murder, aggravated assault and domestic assault-bodily harm.
Smith said Steve Perry, 45, dragged her alongside a car, crashed it into a tree, kicked out her teeth, bit her thumb, her hand and her cheek, and tried to rip her eye out with his bare hand. According to the affidavit filed in Shelby County General Sessions Criminal Court, witnesses detained Perry until police arrived, and she was in critical condition when she was taken to the hospital.
Smith, 43, has had three of four surgeries on her eye, surgery on her thumb and reconstructive surgery on her face. She will also have extensive dental surgery.
“Even when I was lying in that [hospital] bed, I thought, ‘I need to help other people.’ This scares me to absolute death, and I can’t imagine other people going through it,” she said.
The office manager for Sherwood Urgent Care in Maumelle, Smith is the mother of two children, a 21-year-old daughter and a 10-year-old son, both by the same man.
It was at his home in Cordova, Tennessee, during their daughter’s birthday celebration in September that the incident occurred that resulted in Perry’s arrest.
Vincent Higgins, communications director for the Shelby County District Attorney’s Office in Memphis, said Perry’s case has been bound over to state court.
“The charges against him are held to the scrutiny of a Shelby County grand jury,” Higgins said. “If the grand jury returns a true bill, he will be tried for all three of these charges, or they could choose to indict him on something else.” Higgins said the case would then “be held to a criminal-court jury.”
Perry’s attorney of record, Mischelle Alexander-Best of Memphis, did not return messages left at her office. During a subsequent phone call to the office, a woman who answered the phone said the attorney “will not be commenting on it, and she said don’t call here anymore.”
Both the Memphis Police Department and the Shelby County Sheriff’s Office responded to the incident Sept. 3.
According to a police report, “several witnesses on the scene advised after the crash they observed the suspect on top of the victim banging her head against the concrete. The victim appeared to have a bite mark on her face. The victim was bleeding from her face and head. There were teeth fragments around the victim. The victim was in and out of consciousness as she tried to speak with the officers.”
Smith’s body will heal, but it’s the emotional damage that will take longer. Smith has filed for divorce and is awaiting the outcome of her husband’s legal proceedings. He is in jail in lieu of
$350,000 bond.
Smith said she focused on raising her children and hadn’t dated in seven years in 2014, when she met Perry.
“When I turned 40, I decided God has a plan for me; I know he does. I wanted to get out there in the dating world,” she said.
Smith said she and her best friend in West Memphis — where Smith attended junior high and high school — went to a casino.
That’s where she met Perry, who was not her type at all, Smith said.
“He had dreads; he was short — I like taller men,” she said. “This is awful; I usually don’t judge. He smoked, and I don’t [date] smokers.”
She exchanged numbers with him and figured it would at least give her someone to talk to.
“I get lonely,” she said.
Smith said she and Perry started dating, and he cut his hair and quit smoking for her. She thought he had quit drinking, too, but she said she later found out that wasn’t true.
“Within six months, I knew this was the man. That’s how fast it happened. He treated me like a princess. I’ve never been treated so great.” He also treated her son and daughter well, Smith said.
Smith and Perry were married Aug. 29, 2015. Their one-year anniversary was just a few days before the alleged assault.
She said Perry quit his job as a manager at a truck wash, where he’d worked for about 20 years.
“He was helping me out with my son. He was being Mr. Mom, doing the housework, taking care of my son. It was really nice,” she said.
Smith said she feels embarrassed that she let Perry manipulate her and that she misjudged him.
“I’m just so shocked. I just cannot believe I fell for that. I’m not an idiot,” she said.
There was no slow buildup of abuse, she said. There was one incident at home that convinced her that she had to leave him. But Smith said she didn’t take her son and go to a shelter.
“I was terrified because of my job and the bills — there was just so much involved,” she said.
It all came to a head in September during Smith’s daughter’s birthday celebration in Tennessee. Smith said her daughter’s father was buying the young woman a car for her 21st birthday, and Smith and Perry went to the celebration. Her daughter had driven her old PT Cruiser there.
Smith said Perry was drinking straight gin on the way to the event, and he warned her not to hug anyone at the party or do any of a list of things.
She said he continued drinking at the party and started pinching the back of her arm and making threats.
“I knew there was no way I was going home with him,” she said.
Smith said the father of her children heard Perry talking disrespectfully to her and threatening her, and he ordered Perry off his property.
Perry was sitting in her daughter’s old car and asked Smith to bring him his cellphone so he could call someone for a ride.
According to an affidavit in the case, “He drove off dragging her down the street.”
“When I walked around the door to where he was sitting, he grabbed me by my shirt and just floored it — he dragged me about 500 feet. At that point, I was in shock,” Smith said. “My flip-flops flew off first; I just remember the pain of my feet. I remember thinking, ‘He’s going to let go of me, and I’m going to be run over.’ I looked up and saw my daughter running after me saying, ‘Mama, Mama!’ The pain went away when I saw her face. I remember reaching my hand out to her, and I saw her fall down.”
Smith said her husband cursed at her and pulled her into the car; then he started “striking her on the head and body,” the affidavit states.
“He said, ‘We’re going to die today, and we’re dying together.’ I grabbed my seat belt and put it on, and he just picked up speed. I braced my feet the best I could. It felt like it was taking forever, and he kept going faster. I kept saying, ‘I love my kids; I love my kids’ to myself,” she said.
“Finally, we slammed into something,” Smith said, adding that she never looked up to see that it was a tree. According to the affidavit, Smith said he was “intentionally
trying to kill her.”
She thinks she passed out because the next thing she knew he was at her car door, but the door wouldn’t open.
“Through his side of the door, he grabs me out by my hair. I looked around, and I realized we were in a neighborhood, and it was the scariest thought because I saw nobody — nobody,” she said, crying. “He started banging my head on the concrete and banging it and banging it. I just remember the pain was so intense that I put my hands on the side of my head.”
All she could think of was her children, she said.
“I remember saying, ‘God, they have to have me. They love their dad, but I’m their whole world.’”
Smith said her husband started kicking her in the face with his work boots. Finally, she heard men talking. Neighbors who heard the wreck had run from their homes, she said.
She heard the ambulance sirens, and that’s when her husband went into a frenzy, she said.
“He bit my thumb. … He bit a chunk out of my hand. He bit a chunk out of my face. … He tried to rip my eyeball out with his hand — that was the worst thing for me,”
she said.
A doctor who was driving by stopped to help, she said, and that man and people in the neighborhood pulled Perry
off of her and held him until the authorities arrived.
“Thank God, because if not, my eyeball would have been all the way out, probably,”
she said.
Smith said she only stayed in the hospital one night because she found out Perry was in the same hospital, and she panicked.
She said she knew she needed help to put her life back together. At a friend’s suggestion, she started a Go Fund Me page. She also connected with Jajuan Archer of Bryant, who founded Women’s
Own Worth, or WOW, a nonprofit organization to help victims of domestic violence and other violent crimes. More information about the organization is available at
womensownworth.com.
Archer started the organization after her own traumatic event. In 2011, she shot and killed her ex-boyfriend after he abducted her at gunpoint for the second time.
“Jajuan has been a godsend,” Smith said. “Jajuan was the one who has set my therapy up; she got me set up for the dentist, the plastic surgery,” Smith said.
Archer said WOW “bridges the gap and fills it where it’s needed. We’re going to bridge the gap and pay whatever she is going to need out of pocket.”
The group’s annual fundraiser, the WOWapalooza, was held in October at the Governor’s Mansion in Little Rock, and Smith attended.
“It was wonderful,” Smith said. “My son said, ‘You tell the governor that kids have a voice, too; there’s no excuse for abuse.’”
Archer said the goal was $45,000, and the event raised $67,000.
The organization doesn’t receive federal funding, “so there’s no red tape,”
Archer said.
Smith said she must have a major eye surgery, which likely will be in December, before any other procedures are performed.
“I’m probably never going to see out of that eye, normally,”
she said. “Since Sept. 3, I have not had this eye open.”
Smith said the outcome could have been much worse for her.
“It was to the point I thought, ‘Is this going to be me or him? Are my kids going to end up visiting me in a casket or in jail? What am I going to do?’” Smith said.
“I honestly feel like, as bad as it sounds, because of what I went through that day, that God was with me. I feel like if it hadn’t have happened like it happened, I probably would have ended up dead,” she said.
“All I could think of was, I knew this was going to happen. I knew that I could not figure a way to get out. I was blessed to be lying in that hospital bed alive, and there are ladies who are not so lucky. There are kids who watch their mothers be beat, and it just breaks my heart,” Smith said.
“My 10-year-old told me, ‘Mom, I hope when I grow up, I’m as a strong as you. You’ve been through so much, and you’re the strongest person I know,’” Smith said. “My daughter said, ‘I thought I was going to lose you forever.’
“I will heal from all this, and all these scars will be gone. I’m getting there. I’m getting better.”
Smith said she is passionate now about domestic-
violence prevention, and she plans to share her story as much as possible.
“For my kids and for myself, I have to let women know there is help out there,” she said.
Senior writer Tammy Keith can be reached at (501) 327-0370 or tkeith@arkansasonline.com.