WEST VALLEY CITY -- West Valley City police are trying to figure out why a man shot and killed two of his neighbors Tuesday night.
Police say 23-year-old Kennedy Lund shot and killed Chasidy Gerber, 37, and Martin Barron, 33, without any provocation.
Alyssa Dean saw her mother, Chasidy Gerber, a few hours before her death.
"I thank God I got to see her right before," Dean said. "I got to say 'I love you' you know."
Dean said it was the first time Gerber had met her new granddaughter.
"Now she’s gone and she just barely got to meet her new grandbaby. She got to see her," Dean said.
Gerber had been in and out of Dean's life after struggling with addiction, but things changed after her first grandchild was born.
"She started getting clean you know?" Dean said. "As soon as I had the first one, she realized she had something to live for."
Dean said her mother had recently started staying in a trailer that sits behind Lund's West Valley house.
"She made friends with Richie and he let her come stay there and she was watching his kids for him."
The owner of the trailer, Richie, had been outside with his kids when Lund came out of the house naked with a gun, according to West Valley City Police Public Information Officer, Roxeanne Vainuku.
"He sees something clearly is wrong, grabs his children and heads inside the trailer," Vainuku said.
That's when Gerber and her friend, Martin Barron, came out of the trailer.
"Witnesses tell us there was no sort of confrontation, no sort of conversation, but Mr. Lund just started firing shots at these two hitting them and killing them both," Vainuku said.
It all happened within earshot of the children.
"It breaks my heart because those kids, they loved my mom so much," Dean said. "They were always 'Chasidy, Chasidy,Chasidy', yeah they loved her so much."
Police say Lund then ran across the street to his family's home where a relative had taken his gun. However, when Fox13's Dora Scheidell knocked on the door, the family didn't want to comment.
Police are still trying to determine what set him off.
"We didn’t find anything that would indicate drugs or drug use thus far however there have been blood tests taken to see if that was a factor in this incident," Vainuku said.
Dean wants to know why two seemingly innocent bystanders ended up dead?
"I don’t understand how a person can just take away a mother and a grandma and a sister," Dean said. "She meant a lot to our family."
Police say they've interviewed all of the witnesses, but haven't had the chance to interview Lund yet because he was in such an agitated state when he was taken into custody Tuesday night.
