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Layton • The men were best friends for years. They worked at Domino's Pizza and lived in the same house. They liked playing video games and shooting guns.
Christopher Fritz, 20, and Taylor Vancamp, 24, had rarely, if ever, been in a fight, friends and family said. But in the pre-dawn hours of Dec. 19, after working a late shift together and spending several hours drinking, the two ended up in a serious argument about their romantic interests, prosecutors said Friday.
It escalated into a fistfight and a wrestling match — and ended with Fritz shooting Vancamp multiple times in his Layton bedroom, Davis County prosecutors told 2nd District Judge David Hamilton at Fritz's preliminary hearing in Layton.
Fritz is scheduled to be arraigned April 26 on a first-degree-murder charge.
Dec. 18 started as a "typical day," Deputy Davis County Attorney Nathan Lyon said. Fritz and Vancamp worked late, leaving in separate cars to run errands in the Layton area at about 11:30 p.m. They got home sometime after midnight, drank, played video games and watched movies.
"It seemed like an ordinary night," Michelle Rowley, who also lived in the house near 1350 East and 275 North, said at the hearing.
But, according to Layton police Sgt. Riley Richins, the discussion between the two turned serious when they apparently insulted each other's romantic partner. Fritz called on Vancamp to fight: The two tussled in the kitchen, wrestled down a hallway and barged into the room of another roommate, Krista Whitaker, according to Richins.
Whitaker said Vancamp tried to hug Fritz and de-escalate the situation; the two went to their respective bedrooms. But Fritz then looked in the mirror, saw blood on his face and allegedly snapped.
Fritz first told detectives that Vancamp had pointed a gun at him after they separated, and that he fired at Vancamp in response. But in a later interview, investigators said Fritz admitted that his friend was not holding a gun.
"All I did was shoot," Fritz told investigators, according to Richins. "I didn't know what was in [Vancamp's] hands. I opened up [the door to his room] and it just happened."
Investigators found 16 bullet casings at the scene. Multiple rounds struck Vancamp as Fritz entered the room, prosecutors said. A medical examiner said Vancamp would've died within minutes.
A 911 call was placed at 7:37 a.m., but investigators believe the shooting occurred much earlier, sometime just before 6 a.m.
Some of Friday's questions focused on whether Fritz and his father, who lived downstairs in the home, may have tried to alter the scene or come up with an alternate story of what happened between the shooting and the 911 call, perhaps trying to show that Fritz acted in self-defense.
On the way to the police station for questioning, Richins said, Fritz apologized to an officer. He later asked the same officer, a military veteran, whether the officer "could ever forget" the people he had killed in combat.
"This is not a whodunit, this is a whydunit," Fritz's attorney Steven Shapiro said. "It's an unspeakable tragedy."
Twitter: @lramseth