A 21-year-old Kearns man is dead and his girlfriend is in custody after a shooting early Friday.
According to the Unified Police Department, at about 1 a.m., Dominic Vigil and the 21-year-old suspect were arguing at a home near 5300 South and 4200 West that they shared with the man’s mother. The girlfriend shot Vigil multiple times before leaving the home, police said. Vigil died at the scene.
A couple hours later, the woman was taken into custody without incident in West Valley City. She has been booked into Salt Lake County jail.
Vigil’s mother told police she was awakened by the couple’s argument and soon saw the girlfriend hitting her son, according to a probable cause statement.
When she tried to intervene, the woman began hitting her too. The couple eventually went back into their room and shut the door, the mother told police. That’s when she heard three gunshots.
The mother then saw her son collapse, and saw the girlfriend point the weapon at her and pull the trigger, she told police. The weapon apparently did not fire in that moment.
After the suspect was taken into custody, the woman told police that she and Vigil “would fight, and sometimes the fights became physical.” She said she suspected Vigil was being unfaithful, that they argued, and that she took Vigil’s phone and threw it on the ground, breaking it.
After that, Vigil started hitting her, she said, adding that Vigil’s mother also began hitting her, and that she was “defending” herself. According to the probable cause statement, the woman said she believed Vigil “was going for the gun, which he had used to threaten her with in the past.”
They both reached for the weapon, but she got to it first, she told investigators, adding that she “must’ve had her finger on the trigger already, and when she turned … it went off … three times,” according to the probable cause statement.
The woman admitted she pointed the gun at Vigil’s mother, but said she “thought she was coming in there with her own gun.”
The suspect is being held without bail. The Salt Lake Tribune generally does not name defendants unless they have been charged with a crime.
Editor’s note • Those who are experiencing intimate partner violence, or know someone who is, are urged to call the Utah Domestic Violence Link Line, 1-800-897-LINK (5465).