Tiki the dog helps Illinois man Chris Smith survive gunshot to the head
On Thanksgiving afternoon in 2021, emergency medical technician Dennis Hobson was summoned to a house in the tiny village of Farmersville, Illinois. It was the house where his friend Chris Smith lived with his dog Tiki.
What he encountered is the subject of "Fatal First Date," an all-new "48 Hours" reported by correspondent Erin Moriarty, airing Saturday, Nov. 2 at 1/9c on CBS and streaming on Paramount+.
A 911 call had been placed to the Montgomery County Sheriff's Office by someone checking on Smith, and Hobson walked into a bloody scene.
The side door of Smith's house had been broken, and Hobson found his friend — barely alive — lying on the floor of the blood-soaked kitchen. Smith had a gunshot wound to the head and a woman, later identified as Leslie Reeves from nearby Troy, Illinois, was lying dead on the living room floor with a single bullet wound to her head, according to a sheriff's report.
Friends later told sheriff's deputies that the couple had gone on their first date the previous night after meeting online. In the first hours of the investigation, no one knew what happened, but investigators believed a third person was involved because no gun was found at the scene.
Smith survived the shooting but doesn't remember anything from that Thanksgiving Day. Hobson later told him some details. "He said I had no pulse," Smith told Moriarty. "He screamed my name three times, and I took a gasp and I said, 'Denny, I'm f***ing freezing.'"
Hobson later told Smith that Tiki likely helped to save his life. The temperature inside the house on that Thanksgiving Day was much colder than normal because the suspect had broken the glass on the side door.
"But somebody was keeping you warm," Moriarty said. "I had Tiki there," Smith replied. "My little girl, my little four-legged daughter."
Smith had owned Tiki, a beagle-terrier mix, for three years. He says he found her in a Craigslist ad and adopted her when she was a pup. Tiki apparently was Smith's lifesaver when she huddled with him, and provided much needed warmth, in the 12 hours before he was rescued.
"Tell me about [Tiki]," Moriarty asked Smith.
"Well … she apparently — when Denny walked in and saw her laying by me … I was … in the fetal position … and she was cuddled up next to me," he replied.