On a summer evening in Taylorsville, Utah, a suburb of Salt Lake City, 17-year-old Kaylissa O'Leary, a White female, attended a house party that would tragically be her last. The night of August 24, 2019, ended in chaos and sorrow when a gunshot echoed through the residence. When police arrived, they found Kaylissa deceased on the living room floor with a gunshot wound to her forehead. A.
380-caliber shell casing was discovered several feet away from her body.
Initial reports to law enforcement suggested the gunshot may have been self-inflicted. However, the scene quickly became clouded with suspicion. As officers secured the area, they noted that the majority of the partygoers, estimated to be at least eleven individuals, had fled. This mass exodus, coupled with the fact that Kaylissa's blue Honda Civic was missing from the location, prompted investigators to label her death as suspicious. While her car was located several days later, the circumstances surrounding its initial disappearance remained troubling.
The investigation into Kaylissa's death delved into the digital world of the teenage attendees. According to court documents, detectives sought access to multiple Snapchat accounts belonging to those at the party. One witness told police they had seen Snapchat stories posted just before the shooting that showed two partygoers posing with guns. Another individual at the scene reported hearing that Kaylissa had been "playing with a gun and it went off." This same person alleged that after the shot, a group of seven people—four males and three females—left the house and took the gun with them.
Despite the ongoing investigation and the numerous interviews conducted by the Unified Police Department, the case remains unresolved. No specific suspects have been publicly named, and no arrests have been made in connection with the death of Kaylissa O'Leary, a senior at Copper Hills High School who was just weeks away from her eighteenth birthday. The question of whether her death was an accident or a homicide lingers, leaving a painful void for her family and community.
