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Prosecutors will seek the death penalty against David Fresques, accused of gunning down three people in cold blood inside their Midvale home in February 2013.
Salt Lake County District Attorney Sim Gill announced the decision on Friday, along with filing a notice that his office will ask a 3rd District Court jury to consider execution as the 26-year-old career criminal's fate, if he is convicted on three counts of aggravated murder.
Fresques, who was bound over by Judge Mark Kouris last month, is scheduled for a four-week trial in March 2015.
Kouris made the decision following three days of testimony, in which he heard that Fresques, pistol in hand, had gone from room to room in a killing spree that left Omar Jarman, 35, Danielle Lucero, 26, and Shontay Young, 34, lying dead in pools of blood.
Hours after leaving the scene of the triple homicide, David Fresques allegedly told a woman that, "I ran out of bullets." However, he did not directly admit to killing the three.
Instead, Rebecca Diamond recalled on the witness stand, Fresques indicated that given the way he was feeling on the day of the slayings, there was no telling what he might have done.
Fresques' alleged motives for the killings remain unclear, though witnesses at his preliminary hearing indicated a homicidal conclusion to what may have been a number of petty grievances. Fresques may have thought that Jarman was a snitch; and he purportedly disliked Young because she was black.
Why he allegedly shot Lucero or Vickie Myers, the lone shooting victim to survive (Fresques faces an attempted murder count in connection with her), remained a mystery when the preliminary hearing wrapped up.
Fresques' criminal record prior to the slayings included charges in 3rd District Court ranging from assault and robbery to theft by deception and forgery.
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