Cedar Rapids man charged with attempted murder fired gun multiple times

A Cedar Rapids man who was arrested last week on two counts of attempted murder shot multiple times at another man, hitting him once, according to a criminal complaint.

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Brian Allen Keys, 60, is accused of shooting Tyree Smith in his midsection, injuring his kidneys and putting him at “substantial risk of death,” on July 8, according to the complaint. Keys was arrested last week and charged with two counts of attempted murder, three counts of assault while displaying a dangerous weapon, and one count each of willful injury resulting in serious injury, reckless use of a firearm resulting in serious injury, and assault causing bodily injury, the release states.

In an interview with The Gazette on Monday, Smith’s wife, Shanquisha Barnes, of Cedar Rapids, said Keys had threatened Smith in the past on multiple occasions.

On the day of the shooting, Barnes said she got into an argument with Keys over the phone while she was talking with her 15-year-old son. Keys is dating Barnes’ mother and lives with her. The teenager was visiting them at their home, in the 3300 block of O Avenue NW.

Barnes said she asked her son to come home to babysit his siblings, but Keys was upset with her for asking the boy to leave and wouldn’t give him a ride home. Barnes didn’t have a car, so Smith asked his brother, Jadis Rhodes, to give them a ride, and the three of them went to pick the boy up from Keys’ house, Barnes said.

When they arrived, Barnes said she went inside to help her son get his belongings. As she was leaving, Keys attacked her, hitting her in the head with a gun, which left a laceration and a lump over her right eyebrow, according to a criminal complaint.

Smith and Rhodes, who had been standing outside the house, approached to try to help Barnes, but Keys pointed his gun at them and shot twice, missing both times. A fight broke out in the doorway between Smith and Keys, and Keys shot Smith, the complaint states.

“Tyree saw that he hit me, and he reacted, and they started fighting,” Barnes told The Gazette. “Everything happened so quick. Tyree’s brother got shot at. If he hadn’t tripped running out of the house, he could have got hit, too.”

Police responded to the house at 10:15 p.m. on July 8. Smith was taken to a hospital, where he was placed on a ventilator. He had a severe injury to his kidneys, which required dialysis treatment, according to the complaint.

Keys “admitted to police he shot Smith, saying that he shot at him twice and knew that he hit him once, but he did not shoot to kill,” the complaint states.

Barnes said Smith was put in a medically induced coma and wasn’t able to breath on his own until the end of July. He was released from the hospital in August.

When police investigators reviewed the scene, they could see a .380 shell casing inside the front door, and a splatter of blood. There was an unloaded .380 Taurus gun on an upstairs coffee table and a different handgun sitting on the arm rest of a couch in the house, according to a warrant request filed just after the shooting in July.

Barnes told The Gazette she called the Cedar Rapids Police Department before going to pick up her son, because she knew Keys kept guns in the house and she was worried because of threats he’d made in the past. She said she was told the police wouldn’t get involved unless something happened.

“I honestly felt that if the police department would have answered me and helped, this wouldn’t have happened,” Barnes said.

Keys had his first appearance in court over the weekend and is being held on a cash-only, $500,000 bond.

Comments: (319) 398-8328; emily.andersen@thegazette.com