LeeAnn Yeaman had a feeling something bad was going to happen to her daughter, one way or another. She thought it’d be another stint in jail, or maybe an overdose.
The 23-year-old was back on the streets, and she was using again. You could see it all over her. Makayla Yeaman was too thin. Her face was gaunt, and when she called home, she didn’t make any sense.
Early on June 8, LeeAnn tried desperately to get in touch with her daughter. The older woman — herself a recovering drug addict — knew too well the life addicts lead and made up her mind: Makayla was going to detox, either in jail or at rehab, and LeeAnn was going to join her for support.
“We were blowing up her phone. She didn’t even have her phone on her,” LeeAnn said.
It wouldn’t have mattered if she did: “She was already dead by then.”
A West Jordan man shot and killed Makayla about 5:30 a.m., when he discovered her in his garage, Salt Lake County District Attorney Sim Gill said. Gill announced Wednesday that his office wouldn’t file criminal charges against the homeowner for the shooting.
From the investigation, Gill said his attorneys learned that Makayla had gotten into the man’s garage using an opener she apparently took from his vehicle outside. When the homeowner found Makayla, she was hiding in a closet. The garage was dark, Gill said, because the circuit breakers had been switched off.
At first, Gill said, she listened to the man — who had a handgun — but at one point she reached for her waistband, and the man fired. Police found a knife near Makayla’s body, and based on her wounds, Gill said it’s plausible she had brandished something at the homeowner, perhaps the knife.
Based on that information, Gill told The Salt Lake Tribune his office decided not to file charges because the man acted in self-defense.
West Jordan police declined to release the homeowner’s name. The Tribune was unable to locate him for comment Wednesday.
Reached by phone, Makayla’s mother told The Tribune she wasn’t surprised by the decision. LeeAnn had previously said she suspected the case would be “open and shut” unless investigators prodded more into the circumstances of the shooting.
According to Utah statutes, a person can shoot someone if he or she believes the shooting will prevent “another person’s imminent use of unlawful force, or ... the commission of a forcible felony.”
Additionally, homeowners are justified in using force on anyone who enters their home “in a violent and tumultuous manner, surreptitiously, or by stealth,” if the owner reasonably believes the force is necessary to prevent injury. Statute also allows homeowners to use lethal force if he or she reasonably believes the person who broke into the home did so to commit a felony and the force was necessary to stop it.
According to police, the man’s wife, mother and 2-year-old child were home at the time of the burglary.
‘She always wanted to be just like me’
Before her last relapse, Makayla was making progress. While incarcerated for a misdemeanor drug offense and a felony charge of illegally having a financial card in 2016, she graduated from South Park Academy, a high school that provides classes to inmates at the Utah State Prison, Canyons School District spokeswoman Kirsten Stewart said.
Stewart said Makayla was well-liked, worked hard and took schooling seriously. She said her staff were “surprised and saddened to hear what happened.”
With her high school diploma, LeeAnn said her daughter, who had a gift for communication, wanted to attend college, get her degree in sign language and become an interpreter. And she wanted to be a mother.
But Makayla also had a problem with heroin and meth and coke.
“She would do any drugs if they were there,” LeeAnn said. “She always wanted to be just like me — but I was in recovery.”
In those final weeks, LeeAnn said she tried to get her daughter into treatment. When Makayla video messaged her, begging “please, please, please, please, please” for some help to move her belongings after she and her boyfriend were kicked out of the storage unit where they kept their things, LeeAnn gathered boxes, with the stipulation that in exchange for her help, her daughter would get treatment.
That was June 7.
The next day, Makayla Yeaman was dead.
