Woman Slain; Suspect Sets Himself Afire

Terrified, 19-year-old Tammy Marie Davis cowered in the doorway of a darkened house just before midnight on Friday night.

“Help me! Help me!” she yelled, banging on the door of a stranger’s house.

Seconds later, a point-blank shotgun blast killed her.

Some 19 hours later, the murder case took a bizarre turn when the only suspect--the victim’s ex-boyfriend and the father of her child--set himself afire in a car near Victorville while being pursued by California Highway Patrol officers.

Brian Keith Framstead, 29, of Inglewood, was listed in critical condition Saturday night in the burn unit at San Bernardino County Medical Center, where Huntington Beach police were waiting in hopes of questioning him in connection with Davis’ slaying.

Responding to an all-points bulletin, Highway Patrol officers spotted Framstead’s 1989 Toyota Tercel just after 7 p.m. on Interstate 15 and sought to pull him over.

Framstead slowed his car but did not stop, instead leaving the freeway and leading police through Victorville surface streets. After a few minutes, CHP Officer Phil Flores saw Framstead grab a red gasoline can and pour fluid over himself while driving.

Then the car “just burst into flames,” Flores said. “It scared the hell out of me. The whole interior was burning.”

“He should have been a stunt man. After a fire like that, that man should have been dead. But his burns didn’t seem nearly as bad as I would have expected.”

Framstead kept driving even after the car caught fire, Flores said.

The flaming car was headed at one point for a gasoline station off Stoddard Wells Road. But Highway Patrol officers, fearful of an even bigger explosion if the car reached the gas pumps, were able to push the car back into the road with one of their own vehicles, Flores said. The car finally came to a stop in the middle of the street.

Highway Patrol officers doused the vehicle with fire extinguishers and pulled the struggling and groaning Framstead from the steaming wreckage.

San Bernardino firefighters were sent to help put out the fire, police said. San Bernardino sheriff’s deputies then took Framstead into custody, and Huntington Beach police headed to the hospital to try to talk to the murder suspect.

“If he’s not dead or physically unable, we’ll try to talk to him about the murder,” Lt. Patrick Gildea of the Huntington Beach police said Saturday night.

Framstead, the father of the victim’s 21-month-old daughter, Reanna Rose, reportedly was under a court order to stay away from Davis and was to begin a six-month jail term tonight at Theo Lacy Branch Jail in Orange for earlier threatening her with a gun.

Police, relatives and former neighbors said that Davis’ violent death on a quiet residential street ended what had been a stormy relationship with Framstead.

Although police said there were no witnesses to the shooting, they believe they have enough circumstantial evidence to make a case against Framstead, whom they described as about 5-foot-10, with blond hair and blue eyes.

Witnesses told police that Framstead was the last person seen with Davis when she left her job at the Bob’s Big Boy restaurant on Edinger Avenue, Foster said.

“He is our only suspect at this time,” Foster said. A shotgun, believed to be the murder weapon, was found by police buried in a clump of bushes near the crime scene Saturday morning.

Davis’ 13-year-old brother and 17-year-old cousin, who visited the scene of the crime at the 15200 block of Rushmoor Lane on Saturday, said that Framstead had telephoned the family’s house twice on Friday asking to talk to his ex-girlfriend.

“I told him over and over again, ‘Brian, she does not want to talk to you,’ ” said the brother, who asked that he not be named.

Davis later went to work at the restaurant on Edinger Avenue, a few blocks from the trim, middle-class neighborhood where she died. Her shift was scheduled to end at 9:30 p.m., but she ended up working several hours overtime, her brother said.

Framstead has harassed Davis and her family repeatedly since the couple broke up last April, her brother charged and the cousin confirmed. The couple separated after he allegedly “pulled a gun on her and the baby,” her brother said.

It was not known if that incident was connected to Framstead’s order to serve the jail term beginning tonight for brandishing a firearm, said Orange County Sheriff’s Lt. Lynn Nehring.

An occasional construction worker, Framstead lived with the victim, her mother and the baby in a three-bedroom mobile home in Garden Grove until just a few months ago, neighbors said. Police went to the mobile home Saturday afternoon to see if he might still be there but came up empty.

Tom Miller, who lives next door to the mobile home that Davis and Framstead used to share, said Davis had “a black eye and a bruise” on her neck after the armed run-in a few months ago, which he understood was over custody of the baby.

Miller said the gun incident a couple months ago was not the only sign of trouble at the mobile home. “They were always fighting,” often about care for the baby or Framstead’s taste for loud, heavy-metal music, Miller said. “He would shout at her and swear at her a lot,” he said.

Another former Garden Grove neighbor, Jeannine Hernandez, said she recalled another occasion about a year ago when she heard a friend of Framstead’s banging on the windows of the mobile home to try to break up a fight and talk Framstead into coming out.

The victim’s brother said that the threats were constant, driving Davis to obtain a restraining order against her former live-in boyfriend, who, the boy said, was an unemployed cabinetmaker.

Despite the restraining order, “he didn’t leave her alone,” the brother said. “He’s threatened me and my whole family.”

The woman who found Davis slumped on the front of her porch at 11:25 p.m. described the attack as swift and bloody.

“I was startled by a bang on the door,” the woman said. “Then I heard her scream. I didn’t even get as far as the hallway (outside the bedroom) before I heard the shot. It happened so fast.”

The woman, who also asked that she not be identified because Davis’ killer was still at large, said that she dashed to the phone and dialed 911 as soon as she heard the gunfire.

According to a police log of the woman’s call, she was “afraid to look out the window” while reporting the crime and “afraid to check” on what might have happened.

Eventually, the woman said she cautiously looked out the door’s peephole to her partially secluded front porch.

“I saw her feet and there was blood on the cement,” she said. “There was blood flowing all over the porch. She was not moving.”

Davis, who was found unconscious by police, was being airlifted by a helicopter when she died of the pellet wounds to her face, body and legs.

Robert Sandoval, 57, who lives two houses from the murder scene, said that he was reading a magazine when he was startled by the gunfire. He said he ran outside and spotted a light-colored compact car parked down the street from his house. The car’s passenger door was open, and the headlights were on. But, Sandoval said, he did not see anyone on the street.

“So I went back into the house and didn’t think anything about it,” he said. He learned of the slaying from neighbors in the morning.

“This is such a nice, quiet neighborhood,” Sandoval said. “Nothing like this has ever happened here. You wouldn’t believe that it could.”

The car spotted by Sandoval, a 1979 Toyota Tercel, belonged to the victim and was later impounded by Huntington Beach police, Foster said.

It was unclear whether Davis had driven to Rushmoor Lane alone, whether she was followed or whether Framstead was with her at the time, Foster said.

“We’re still trying to piece those details together,” he said. He said investigators were searching the car for any clues to add to the circumstantial evidence they already have that may connect Framstead to the crime.

Detectives also were unsure why Davis ended up in the neighborhood. She did not know anyone on the block-long street of single-family homes near Old World Village, police said.

Davis’ parents were unavailable for comment.

“My mom is really shook up,” Davis’ brother said.