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LAYTON — An Ogden man was ordered Friday to stand trial for murder in a shooting he claims was self-defense during a night of drinking.
Jory Fenstermaker, 22, is charged with shooting and killing Randy Lennell Lewis, 29, of Kansas City, Missouri. The two men had met at the West Point home of Andrea Green, the mother of three of Lewis' children and a friend of Fenstermaker.
Green, 28, testified that Lewis was staying at her home on March 15, 2015, while visiting their children, and that he had agreed Fenstermaker should come spend time at the house. The two men were getting along well, Green said, taking a selfie together, playfully "slap boxing," talking extensively and joking.
"They just have a lot in common, they just talked the whole night and left me out of most everything," Green recalled, chuckling a bit.
On cross examination, however, Green acknowledged that Lewis had asked her to get back together and the two men seemed jealous of one another, though she maintained her relationship with Fenstermaker was not romantic. Their "slap boxing" made her nervous, she said, because she knew "they both liked to fight."
Lewis and Fenstermaker left together at one point to drop off one of her children for a sleepover and to purchase more alcohol for the evening, Green said. They also returned with marijuana.
With Green's younger children in bed, the two men continued to drink and talk, and the group smoked together, Green said. The atmosphere changed, however, when Lewis questioned Fenstermaker about $240 that Green believed Fenstermaker's friends had taken from her purse on a previous occasion.
"Randy just started saying, 'You better have my baby mom's back,'" threatening violence, Green said. "That's when Jory got out of his bar stool and pulled the gun."
Green attempted to put herself between the two men and calm Fenstermaker down, she said, talking to Fenstermaker as he pointed the gun at her.
"I told him that he and Randy were drunk and just needed to relax, but I could tell that he wasn't going to calm down," she testified.
When Lewis stood up, Fenstermaker told Green, "You'd better get your boy." That's when Green said Lewis pushed her aside, she heard the gun go off and Lewis fell to the floor.
"I didn't realize (he was shot) until I saw the blood," she said.
Fenstermaker left, Green testified, telling her again, "I told you you should have got your boy." She was with police when Fenstermaker sent her a message on Snapchat that she showed to officers: "I wasn't there, he had a knife, I left."
Fenstermaker eventually called police and turned himself in the next day. He was released from custody in July after posting $300,000 bail.
Fenstermaker's attorney, Russell Farr, pressed Green about her relationship with Lewis, as well as a statement she made on Facebook saying Lewis had threatened to kill Fenstermaker. Green said she couldn't recall when she had posted the comment, or exactly what it had been in response to.
Farr also questioned Davis County Sheriff's Sgt. Jon West, the lead detective in the case, about the possibility that Lewis could have been reaching for some knives in the kitchen sink when Fenstermaker fired the gun. He questioned the sergeant about lethal force training for police, including a "21-foot rule" that refers to the distance an individual could cover in the time it takes an officer to asses a threat, draw a weapon and fire.
Evidence at the scene indicates the men were about 17 feet apart when Fenstermaker shot Lewis, Farr noted.
But West maintained that he didn't accept Fenstermaker's claim of self-defense because the knives were too far away from both men when the shooting occurred.
Cross examining the sergeant, Farr also alluded to the August 2014 officer-involved shooting of Dillon Taylor, who was shot and killed by Salt Lake police officer Bron Cruz when Taylor failed to comply with an officer's instructions to show his hands, then pulled out his hands quickly, raising his shirt.
When Farr asked West whether he believed that officer was justified in the shooting, West responded simply, "I have no opinion on that."
Arraignment in the case has been set for Feb. 11.
