In a KHQ interview from jail, Donavon Culps, who was arrested on Thursday for the kidnapping of Cheney, Washington budtender Cameron Smith, admitted to killing Smith after Culps was denied service at Lucid because he didn’t have proper identification.
Culps, 35, said that while Smith wasn’t even inside the store when he was asked to leave he “was having a very bad day [and Smith] got the ugly side of it.” Culps said he had intended to fight Smith, but ended up pulling out his gun and shooting the 46-year-old budtender.
“I did not think about it, I just pulled out the gun and shot him,” Culps said in the interview. “I dumped the body, I dumped the car, then I went home.”
According to a Spokesman-Review report, Smith’s body was discovered by a police search and rescue team under heavy cover off state Route 904 near Four Lakes. Culps led the police to the site on Friday, the day after he was arrested.
His niece Violetta Culps, who also participated in the kidnapping of Smith, remains at large.
Culps is being held in Spokane County Jail on $1 million bail. He faces armed robbery and kidnapping charges but, according to jail records at the time of this article’s publishing, he has not yet been formally charged with murder.