On the afternoon of Thanksgiving 2021, emergency medical technician Dennis Hobson was summoned to a home in the small village of Farmersville, Illinois. It was the house where his friend Chris Smith lived with his dog Tiki.

What he encountered is the subject of “Fatal First Date,” an all-new “48 Hours” report by correspondent Erin Moriarty, airing Saturday, Nov. 2 at 1/9c on CBS and streaming on Paramount+.

A 911 call had been made to the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office by someone watching Smith, and Hobson walked into a bloody scene.

The side door of Smith’s house had been broken and Hobson found his friend – barely alive – lying on the kitchen floor, bloodied. Smith suffered a gunshot wound to the head, and a woman, later identified as Leslie Reeves of nearby Troy, Illinois, lay dead on the living room floor with a single gunshot wound to the head, according to the report of the sheriff.

Friends later told sheriff’s deputies that the couple had gone on their first date the night before after meeting online. In the early hours of the investigation, no one knew what happened, but investigators believed a third person was involved because no weapons were found at the scene.

Smith survived the shooting but doesn’t remember anything about that Thanksgiving. Hobson later gave him some details. “He said I didn’t have a pulse,” Smith told Moriarty. “He screamed my name three times, I gasped and said, ‘Denny, I’m really freezing.'”

Hobson later told Smith that Tiki probably helped save his life. That day, the temperature inside the house was much colder than normal because the suspect had broken the glass in the side door.

“But someone was keeping you warm,” Moriarty said. “I had Tiki there,” Smith replied. “My little girl, my little four-legged girl.”

Smith had owned Tiki, a beagle-terrier mix, for three years. He says he found her in a Craigslist ad and adopted her when she was little. Tiki was apparently Smith’s lifesaver when she snuggled up to him and provided him with much-needed warmth in the 12 hours before his rescue.

“Tell me about (Tiki),” Moriarty asked Smith.

“Well…apparently when Denny came in and saw her lying next to me…I was…in the fetal position…and she was cuddled up next to me,” he replied.

The dramatic story of Smith and Reeves’ “Fatal First Date” and Smith’s remarkable recovery is first told in “48 Hours.” The show will include an exclusive interview with Reeves’ convicted killer, a former boyfriend of hers named Robert Tarr, who denies being the shooter.

A Montgomery County Sheriff’s report later pieced together what happened that night. Smith and Reeves, after a night of bar-hopping and getting to know each other, had returned to his rented house in Farmersville.

Around 1 a.m. on Thanksgiving morning 2021, authorities believe an attacker forced open a side door while Smith and Reeves were in the downstairs kitchen reheating a late-night frozen pizza.

A deputy sheriff told a friend of Reeves that she died immediately and “did not suffer.”

Investigators later concluded that the attacker that night was Robert (Bobby) Tarr, an ex-boyfriend of Reeves who had secretly followed her to Smith’s house, according to Andrew Affrunti, the prosecutor in charge of the affair.

Tarr was convicted of murder and attempted murder in April 2024 and sentenced to 85 years in prison.

Smith, who had three strokes in the hospital and was put in a medically induced coma, has been recovering since the shooting and is making progress. He still uses a wheelchair and cane, but has started singing again in his rock and roll band and is looking for work.

He was unable to care for Tiki himself during her recovery, but she lives nearby and they see each other often. Smith also started a business as a motivational speaker and created a website: ChrisSmithmotivatingyou.com. He also bought a new house and just proposed to his girlfriend, now fiancé, Michelle Albrecht.