As I researched this video/article, I decided to look in passing at S-Mart itself. What began as an obligatory journalistic crossing of t’s and dotting of i’s turned into a rabbithole of abyssian depth, its darkest reaches yet unexplored. I will shine my light as deep into those depths as I can, to better illuminate them for you, the viewer.
Tl;dr: violent psychosis at S-Mart is not a new thing. Violent attacks, unexplained phenomena, and strange deaths are actually a long-standing tradition at Michigan’s favorite discount department store chain.
The first record I found dated to February 19th, 1993, and people, it’s a doozy. On an average day at the Detroit S-Mart, a local bank executive by the name of Jennifer Terrence was shopping at S-Mart and experienced a psychotic episode, physically assaulting nearby shoppers. Her attack was stopped by S-Mart employee Ashley J. Williams (housewares), who retrieved a rifle from the sporting goods section and shot Ms. Terrence 31 times. Prior to her death, Ms. Terrence was described by witnesses as threatening to ‘swallow’ their souls.
While there was some question regarding the extreme use of force by Mr. Williams, eyewitnesses unanimously agreed that his response was warranted, and told police that, prior to his intervention, Ms. Terrence had been preparing to strike another S-Mart employee with a cash register.
That’s right. A cash register. Those things ain’t light.
And that wasn’t the only feat of astonishing physicality attributed by eyewitnesses to Ms. Terrence, whose bodyweight was 113 lbs. Eyewitnesses described her leaping up to twenty feet through the air, performing multiple mid-air flips, and moving with such speed that she appeared to “levitate.” Further, witnesses unanimously agreed that it required 31 rifle rounds to stop her.
The alert viewer will have noticed the word “levitation” in this account. Sound familiar? It gets crazier.
The name of the S-Mart employee who stopped her was Ashley J. Williams. If you’re from Elk Grove, Michigan, or if you’re a maven of macabre mystery, you might just remember that name from a little incident that occurred waaay back in 1981. Or, perhaps you’d remember him better by his more-popular nickname… Ashy Slashy.
That’s right. Ashley J. Williams is THE Ashy Slashy, the sole survivor of a weekend camping trip that ended in the bloody deaths of four Michigan-area twentysomethings. Though Williams was ultimately not charged with the crime, popular opinion in Elk Grove held that he had committed the act, hence the serial killer-esque name. In later years, Williams returned to Elk Grove and evidently won the community’s approval, even operating a hardware store called “Ashy Slashy’s” for several months before his disappearance and presumed death in the 2018 earthquakes that rocked Elk Grove.
Is there any connection here? It’s difficult to say. But there is a pattern of extreme violence connected with this man, and he was an S-Mart employee. In fact, my research shows that he remained with the franchise until they were bought out by ValueStop in 2009. Whether he was one of the employees who transitioned into employment with ValueStop I have been unable to ascertain, as the ValueStop brand is managed by the Mok-Nan Group, whose corporate offices are in Korea, and they have been unresponsive to my requests for information.
But, speaking of Valuestop… even they are not immune from the saga of violence and death that plagues S-Mart.
Many residents of Detroit will recall the strange climatological events that beset us around Halloween of 2015. We had storms, lightning, and, in a strange piece of cosmic timing, even sinkholes opening up on local streets and outside of dive bars. It felt like the end-times to some, myself included.
That night, ValueStop manager Eugene Roper disappeared toward the end of his shift. At the time, it was not reported, as the store was closing soon anyway and everyone was distracted by the extreme winds that were blowing through Detroit. According to my research, Eugene Roper was not well-liked by his employees. When he suddenly vanished they may have been disinclined to look for him.
However, signs of possible foul play were discovered in that store the next morning; piles of the popular “Lil Lori” dolls had been smashed, and traces of human blood were found amidst the smashed dolls.
And Mr. Roper? He was discovered the next morning, decapitated, in the middle of Interstate 24. He had to be identified by his fingerprints, because his head was not found and remains, to this day, undiscovered. Where did Mr. Roper spend those hours between his disappearance and the discovery of his body? Unknown. How did his decapitated corpse wind up in the middle of an interstate? Another mystery. What happened to his head? Another piece of the S-Mart puzzle. However, it is unlikely that the strange discoveries at his ValueStop location were a coincidence. Whatever caused such havoc in the ValueStop stockroom no doubt also lead to Mr. Roper’s gruesome death. The sign on the store may have read ValueStop, but the mystery and carnage were pure S-Mart.