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Sheryl Adams didn't hear the sound of the gunshot over the phone.
She only heard her daughter screaming; the exact words, unintelligible.
"She was just screaming at him. Then I heard something muffled in the background and then the phone went quiet," Adams said.
That was at 11: 46 a.m. on Sunday, June 7.
By 11:51, police dispatchers were fielding a 911 call about a shooting in the Murray apartment complex that left 34-year-old Jamie Salazar, her 2-year-old son , Jordan, and the boy's 30-year-old father dead.
Murray police are investigating the incident as a double-murder suicide and believe Johnathon Andrew Reeves, an Army veteran who was struggling to deal with the emotional remnants of a tour in Iraq, shot his fiancée and child before turning the gun on himself.
"The war was not good for John. He had lots of flashbacks" said Adams. "He couldn't have been thinking clearly. He couldn't have had his head on straight. If he had, he wouldn't have done this."
The fight between Salazar and Reeves had started sometime Saturday night when the couple was at Lagoon, Adams said. In text messages to family, Salazar said she wanted to end the relationship. Reeves had complained that Salazar was spending too much time on others and was preoccupied with her Salt Lake Community College studies — she wanted to be a crime scene investigator, Adams said — and with the hobbies she loved, photography and painting.
Adams doesn't know if her daughter really intended to leave — it's something that had been said before — but she suspects Salazar had told Reeves she wanted out.
"I know she still loved John, but I think she had had enough," Adams said. "I think he thought she was serious. He must have."
Adams was on the phone with Reeves in the minutes before Sunday's shooting and said she could tell a fight was ongoing. Reeves, who rarely raised his voice, was agitated and reluctant to put Salazar on the phone with her mother, Adams said.
The couple was no stranger to tumult.
Court records show Reeves had threatened Salazar with a shotgun last summer and said he wanted to kill her, her kids and himself. Reeves was arrested and charged, but had the case diverted in January to veterans' court, a program for military service personnel that includes peer support and substance abuse counseling.
The program subjects participants to multiple layers of supervision, including periodic home inspections, and requires them to surrender any firearms and stay away from alcohol and drugs, unless prescribed by a physician.
Records show Reeves was a water treatment specialist for the U.S. Army beginning in 2006 and deployed to Iraq from October 2007 to January of 2009. After leaving active duty in 2010, Reeves served in the Texas Army National Guard until August 2012.
On Thursday, the weekly veterans' court hearing was heavy with emotion.
Since the shooting, the veterans' court team, which includes counselors, police, attorneys, veteran mentors and court staff, had been working to connect with each of the program participants to ensure that the safety it is designed to provide had been working, Judge Royal Hansen said.
"As all of you realize, we've experienced some challenging and sad days," the judge noted. "They've taken a toll on all of us."
Tears flowed freely throughout the hour-long hearing, as each participant expressed feelings about the loss of their friend Reeves and spoke of their gratitude for the program. Among those hard hit by Sunday's events was a veteran who said Reeves was like a "little brother" to him. The pair had spent some two hours on the phone at some point during the last week as Reeves tried to work through a problem.
"I was able to listen to him and walk him through the process," the man, who asked not to be identified by The Salt Lake Tribune, said through tears. I don't know what happened ... It's been an emotional week. I feel kind of lost. But I'm going to tell you, it's going to make me stronger."
Keith Brown, a veteran mentor for the program, said he and others were shocked by the news of the shooting, because it was such a detour from the Reeves who had been coming to court. But, Brown said, the depth of pain some vets carry can run deep and many work hard to hide their demons from others.
"Hindsight is twenty-twenty," said Brown, a Marine who served in Vietnam. "But I can't see anything we could have done differently."
Adams said Wednesday she doesn't know where Reeves got the gun used in the shooting, but knew her daughter had found empty liquor bottles in her apartment and believes that may have prompted her comments about separating from Reeves.
Adams also said that despite Reeves' progress — court records include numerous entries about his good performance — she believes he had skipped more than one scheduled court appearance because he had relapsed.
More oversight by program administrators might have detected that and prevented Sunday's deaths, she said,
"It's a wonderful program," said Adams. "But something went wrong."
Adams is now struggling to make sense of her emotions.
She is angry with Reeves for taking the lives of Salazar and Jordan — an emotional blow that comes only a year after Adams buried an older daughter.
She is also wrestling with how to comfort Salazar's three older children from a previous marriage, who were in the apartment when the shooting occurred, but were not harmed. The youngest, an 8-year-old boy, told his grandmother he witnessed the shooting, Adams said.
"They are so confused," she said.
But she also said she loved Reeves and will welcome his grieving parents when they arrive in Utah from Texas this weekend to retrieve their son's body.
"I loved John. I never thought he would kill her," Adams said. "I keep thinking, where were the signs? Why didn't we see the signs?"
Funeral services for Salazar and her son are scheduled for noon on Tuesday at Valley View Funeral Home in West Valley City.