Powerful.
Just over a year ago, on June 8th, 2025, Conner Smith fatally struck a pedestrian in a Nashville crosswalk. It was a tragedy that happened on the last day of CMA Fest in 2025, a day after he played at the event’s Riverfront Stage. The tragic accident that took the life of Dorothy “Dot” Dobbins.
Initial reports from TMZ suggested that country music singer Conner Smith was behind the wheel of a truck that struck and killed an elderly woman in Nashville. According to law enforcement, Smith was heading north on 3rd Avenue in his Chevy Silverado as 77-year-old Dobbins was attempting to cross the street in the marked crosswalk.
The 77-year-old Nashvillian was transported to the nearby Vanderbilt Medical Center following the accident, but unfortunately succumbed to her injuries and was officially pronounced dead at the hospital. Smith was initially charged with a misdemeanor citation for failure to yield the right of way resulting in death, but those charges were later dropped.
The country music singer took some time out of the spotlight after the accident, and then eventually returned and has since been very open about the incident. He’s profusely apologized, and has also shared that his faith and relationship with God has strengthened throughout the past year.
Smith is most prominently known as an artist who rose in the country music ranks thanks to TikTok. His song “I Hate Alabama” went viral a couple of years ago, and fans might also recognize his hit song “Creek Will Rise,” or his Tennessee anthem “Orange and White.” He also released his debut album Smoky Mountains in January 2024, and has since made plenty of appearances at various country music festivals over the past couple of years.
He shared on Instagram just under a week ago about how much God has showed up in his life throughout this tragedy:
“A year ago today was the hardest day of my life. I was driving home from The Listening Room Cafe on Sunday evening after CMA Fest. My buddy had asked me to hop up with him at The Listening Room, and I was driving home that night when tragedy came. I’ve talked about it over the last year enough and there’s not much more to add, other than God is so much better that I could have ever imagined. He is sovereign and real and true and an incredible healer.”
Conner Smith has previously stated that the only real peace he’s experienced after the tragedy is in his walk of healing with the Lord. The country singer says that he’s experienced the presence of Jesus and God in “unfathomable ways,” and feels as though he’s been shown kindness and forgiveness from those on Earth and from the Lord above.
In the eyes of Smith, yet another example of that forgiveness came on the exact one year anniversary of the accident that forever changed his life:
“About six weeks ago, my buddy texted me and asked if I would hop up for his song at The Listening Room. I haven’t been back since that night in June. I told him, ‘Yeah, of course.’ I didn’t really think about it much, to be honest… so one year later to the day was the date that he asked me to hop up in The Listening Room.
I was sitting with Jesus this morning and thinking about the last year and everything we’ve walked through and everything we’ve experienced. The radical change in my life from walking through a suffering like that. But I was also kind of asking him, ‘Why is it in your intentionality that you’d have me back there (on June 8)?’ As I was talking to a friend, he brought up the point that he felt like God was marking time.”
Conner Smith did end up going to The Listening Room on the one-year-anniversary of the tragedy, and he said later on in the video that he felt comfortable doing so because everything he does from here on in his career is for God’s glory.
And he also recently sat down and spoke much more in-depth about all of it during a conversation with his mom, Jennifer Vickery Smith on her Got It From My Momma Podcast, where he opened up about how real God and his love has become to him since this tragedy:
“I remember sitting out here with dad, just maybe a week after. I said something along the lines of, where does that rank for you? Where does last Sunday rank for you as one of the worst days of your life? Because it was definitely mine. He said, ‘It would be hard to find something else that’s at the top.’
I think about my suffering, I think about y’alls suffering as parents, you know, it probably is in its own way worse. I think about dads heart as a father, and then you see God’s heart as a father for you in those moments.”
He explained that he had the “most intimate moments” he’d ever felt with God in the wake of the accident, and he felt God come and sit in the brokenness with him. While he will never understand so much of it, he says he is “certain beyond a shadow of a doubt” of God’s “goodness, faithfulness, provision and love”:
“You go, man like, he keeps true to every promise, and he meets those who are brokenhearted in those moments in a way that is too grand for words.
And that a God of all creation, and all of his glory, and splendor, and majesty would care so much, and enough that he would come in a moment of brokenness and just sit with me. Those moments with the Lord were the most intimate moments that I had ever felt.
All the things that I believed about God, I experienced about God. What I thought to be true, I now know to be true. There’s so much I will never understand, but what I am certain of beyond a shadow of a doubt is His goodness, His faithfulness, His provision and His love for me.”
I can’t imagine the trauma all parties involved have gone through because of this accident, especially the family who lost a loved one, but Smith’s testimony is powerful and the fact that he has been able to heal and find real faith through it all is truly impressive, and an incredibly testimony about Jesus’ unfailing, unconditional love for all of us.
The full podcast is available below.
