Shootings ‘Out of Character’ for Ensign : Slayings: Family and friends in O.C. are shocked. Honor was a factor, his brother says.

A yearbook picture of a beaming George Patrick Smith, voted “Best All Around” by Marina High School’s class of 1987, brought back a flood of memories on Thursday for Smith’s best friend, Todd Destatte.

“Just look here,” Destatte said, as he pointed to an opened page in the dusty yearbook. “He had the brightest future of anybody.”

But that future came to an abrupt and tragic end early Wednesday when Smith, a 24-year-old Navy ensign from Huntington Beach, stormed into the bachelor officers quarters at the Navy’s Amphibious Base in Coronado, and shot to death Lt. (j.g.) Alton Lee Grizzard, 24, and Ensign Kerryn (Kerry) O’Neill, 21, who had been Smith’s fiancee. He then shot himself to death.

Coronado police said the slayings were apparently triggered by a broken romance between Smith and O’Neill, who had met each other while attending the U.S. Naval Academy.

Grizzard, who also attended the academy and was its star quarterback, apparently was not romantically involved with O’Neill but was in her room at the base when the 1:45 a.m. shootings occurred, police said.

The news of the shootings came as a shock to family and friends who struggled to reconcile their warm memories of the athletic and ambitious Smith with police reports that he is responsible for ending three promising young lives.

“George is not a murderer, he’s not a monster,” said 25-year-old Destatte, who last saw Smith 10 days ago. “He was the all-American boy and he was loved by everyone. I want everyone to know about that side of George Smith. He loved Kerry so much. It sounds like he just snapped.”

Smith and O’Neill had been planning to be married until the young woman recently decided to break off their engagement, said Smith’s brother, Lawrence, a Navy petty officer 2nd class.

“George thought of Kerry as the perfect relationship, the dream relationship, a girl who was beautiful, athletic and a Naval Academy graduate,” said Lawrence Smith, 23, who was informed of his brother’s death while at sea aboard the Shiloh, a guided-missile cruiser based in San Diego. He was helicoptered ashore on emergency leave.

Lawrence Smith said he doubted that his brother would have flown into a murderous rage just because O’Neill was breaking their engagement. He said he believes that O’Neill and Grizzard must have been having a romantic relationship and his brother felt his honor impugned.

“I feel that what he did was not right. But you have to understand what honor means to naval officers,” he said. “For one naval officer to take another officer’s fiancee, that’s a lot of dishonor. He must have gone back to defend his honor. Naval officers are like samurai when it comes to honor.

“I don’t have anything bad to say about Kerry or (Grizzard). They were both the best Naval Academy graduates, the best,” he said. “I don’t know what to say to the other families. I sat on the ship and tried to think of what to say.”

Lawrence Smith said his brother had given O’Neill a diamond engagement ring and the two had talked of buying a home and starting a family.

But the couple had broken their engagement several times and a wedding date had been set and broken. O’Neill apparently started dating others while she was stationed in Coronado and his brother was attending nuclear power school in Orlando, Fla., Lawrence Smith said.

The grim news of the shootings was a stark contrast to the joyous memory of the couple’s engagement last year. Destatte said George Smith proposed to O’Neill in front of a large group of family members and friends at the Medieval Times restaurant in Buena Park.

“She was crying and was as happy as could be,” Destatte said. “He got down on one knee and slipped the ring on her finger.”

George Smith had just been assigned to the nuclear submarine Salt Lake City, based in San Diego. He was scheduled to report to the vessel on Thursday and would have soon been at sea.

“He had a perfect grade point average for as far back as I can remember,” said longtime friend Scott Frangente, 25, of Huntington Beach. “He was always a star athlete and a star student. He worked hard for everything and earned all that came his way.”

The shootings were “100% out of character for George,” said Bruce C. Schmidt, a longtime friend who attended grade school with him at St. Bonaventure in Huntington Beach, and later played with him on the high school football team.

“He was so even-keeled,” Schmidt said. “It’s an incredible shock.”

Schmidt said George Smith was on the varsity crew team at the academy as a freshman and loved to sail.

“He used to race sailboats to Catalina with his dad all the time,” he said.

Friends said Smith came from a close, religious family that also included three sisters.

His mother, Lorraine J. Smith, 53, declined to comment from her Huntington Beach home Thursday. His father, George, died of a stroke in 1988 at the age of 45. The elder Smith had also served in the Navy and a Navy career had been a goal of both sons “for as far back as we could remember,” Lawrence Smith said.

“George was a knight in shining armor of that family,” Destatte said. “He was everything to his mom. I know that they are very distraught.”

Coronado Police Lt. Bill Abel said Thursday that detectives have interviewed Smith’s roommates at a rented house in the Point Loma neighborhood of San Diego, near the San Diego Naval Training Center and the Point Loma Submarine Base.

None remembered anything unusual about Smith in the hours before the shootings.

“The last thing they remembered was Smith sitting at his desk writing a letter,” Abel said. “He got up and left around 9 p.m. and they never saw him again.”

Addressed to O’Neill, the letter was found, half-finished and torn up, on the floor of Smith’s room. Abel said the letter mentions regret over the breakup of the couple’s engagement, but says nothing about a murder-suicide.

Nearby, police found several rounds of ammunition.

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Times staff writers Lily Dizon and Mark I. Pinsky contributed to this report.