9-Year-Old Daughter of Slain Police Officer Recalls the Last Time She Said Goodbye to Her Dad

Heidi Smith, second from left, stands between her daughters, Victoria, left, and Caroline Smith, center, with Dallas Sr. Cpl. Marcie St. John, right, standing nearby during the funeral for her husband, Dallas police Sgt. Michael Smith, at the Mary Immaculate Catholic Church in Farmers Branch, Texas, Wednesday, July 13, 2016. (Andy Jacobsohn/The Dallas Morning News via AP)

The daughter of Dallas Police Sgt. Michael Smith remembers the last time she hugged and kissed her father before he was killed along with four other police officers in the July 7 attack.

Smith’s 9-year-old daughter Caroline was on her way to the movies, while her father, a 28-year Dallas police veteran, headed off for work.

“He said to me ‘What if this is the last time you ever kiss me or hug me?’ ... It just felt different to me,” said Caroline in a heartbreaking interview with CBS.

“I felt something bad was going to happen,” she said in tears.

After the shooting ended, Heidi Smith, the widow of the slain sergeant, received a phone call from the Dallas Police Department telling her that her husband had been shot.

She took a while to process the news and then thought “Something is really, really wrong.”

Police then arrived at her house to take her and Caroline to the hospital to be by Smith’s side.

“I think they were just trying to get Caroline and I there to talk to him,” Heidi told CBS.

When they got to the hospital Smith was in surgery. Then they were told what they had feared.

“They said we’re very sorry, and that’s the last thing that I remember,” said Heidi. “Nothing is the same or feels like it will ever be the same.”

Dallas Police Department Chief David Brown said aside from the five police officers killed, nine were injured by either gunfire or fragmentation of bullets. Four of the injured were from the

Dallas Police Department, three were DART officers, and two were officers from the El Centro College. Two civilians were also injured.

On Wednesday, Heidi Smith and her daughters Caroline and Victoria, sat in the front row of Mary Immaculate Church in Farmers Branch.

Rev. Michael Forge shared a story of Caroline when they were at the hospital after her father had been shot.

“Caroline asked me, ‘why did God do this?’ I immediately answered and said God didn’t do this, the anti-God did this,” said Forge in the memorial, according to CBS DFW.

Then Forge said Caroline told him she was able to say goodby for the last time to her father before he died.

“I immediately looked at Caroline and said ‘Caroline, now God did that. That’s what God does,’” said Forge.