Born and raised in Nashville, Conner Smith first went viral on TikTok with his song “I Hate Alabama” in 2021. Two years later, he scored his first No. 1 hit with “Creek Will Rise,” off his debut album Smoky Mountains. With his country career on the rise, Smith experienced a devastating setback in June 2025 when he allegedly struck and killed an elderly woman with his car. Six months later, the 25-year-old singer-songwriter addressed the tragedy in his first interview since the CMA Fest weekend collision.
Videos by American Songwriter
“It was so out of nowhere,” Smith recalled during an appearance on The Upload with Brooke Taylor. He likened the moment to “a tornado just blowing through my house.”
“There’s so much grief, and there’s so much, like, trauma from that—like, intense trauma,” Smith continued. “There’s a darkness in that. You just can’t… there’s no words, right?”
[RELATED: Conner Smith Speaks Out for the First Time Following Fatal CMA Fest Weekend Crash]
Conner Smith Faced Charges in Deadly Nashville Crash
Initial reports say that the singer was driving a Chevrolet Silverado pickup truck on June 8 when he struck Dorothy Dobbins. The 77-year-old Germantown resident was walking her dog in a marked crosswalk at 3rd Avenue North near Van Buren Street.
Emergency medical officials took Dobbins to Vanderbilt University Medical Center, where she later died.
Witnesses said that Conner Smith immediately ran to Dobbins to provide aid until paramedics arrived from the Nashville Fire Department. Officers from the Metro Nashville Police Department said they found no evidence that he was driving impaired or distracted.
Ultimately, MNPD officers charged Smith with Failure to Yield the Right of Way Resulting in Death, a class A misdemeanor. However, the emotional fallout was far worse than any punishment.
“The night everything happened, I turned off my phone and I put it in a drawer for four weeks,” Smith said. “Like, I didn’t have a phone for a month because it was, like, just so traumatic.”
He and his wife “camped out” at his parents’ property south of Nashville, which he called a “blessing.” Smith credited his family and friends for helping him “carry the weight.”
Less than two months later, Smith returned to the stage for the first time during a July 31 performance at the Grand Ole Opry. As far as returning to music and social media, the “Creek Will Rise” singer says that will come “when God tells me to.”
“I’m just living in such a place of peace and just such a place of, like, overflow… I feel like it’s really, really soon when we’re going to be able to step back into that,” he said. “And I feel a lot of peace over that.”
Featured image by Danielle Del Valle/Getty Images
Leave a Reply
Only members can comment. Become a member. Already a member? Log in.