HAYDEN, IDAHO -- Friends now say that Ryan Taylor and Chad Moore were set on a collision course with each other after Moore reportedly assaulted his pregnant wife, who was Taylor’s ex-wife and the mother of his three children.

Ryan Taylor had three daughters with his ex-wife Amber and after their divorce she remarried Moore. Friends say that Moore had been verbally abusive to Amber and the violence escalated when he physically assaulted her Tuesday.

Amber left the home and went to stay with her mom, who then called Ryan Taylor’s mom to let him know what happened. Ryan in turn went to the couple’s apartment in the Lakeview Village Apartments to check on his daughters’ welfare.

Taylor went to the apartment door and knocked on it. When the door opened he suddenly turned and started running, with Moore in the doorway behind him. Moore fired several shots at Taylor, hitting him in the back of the head and killing him.

Unfortunately, one of the witnesses was Taylor’s 12-year-old daughter who reportedly watched her stepfather gun down her father in front of her home. Another was Kim Starnes, a friend of Ryan’s who had driven with Taylor over to Amber and Chad’s apartment with him.

“I watched the whole thing,” Kim said.

“He got out and next thing I hear is and see Ryan run down the stairs, Ryan opens the door and then heard two gunshots. He was leaving the situation, he was actually leaving, he was walking away and for someone to go ahead and do that to an innocent person God only knows.”

Kim says Moore came out of the apartment, knelt down, said something to Ryan as he lay dying on the ground and then got in his truck and drove off.

The first calls to 9-1-1 came into Kootenai County dispatch just before 3 p.m. with multiple witnesses reported hearing the pop-pop-pop multiple gunshots while others saw Taylor lying on the pavement in front of the apartments.

Moore got into his 1994 blue Toyota pickup truck with a pistol and an AR-15 rifle and fled his home, heading for a remote section of woods north of Hayden Lake that he liked to go shooting in.

The sheriff’s department zeroed in on the area of Hayden Creek Road and brought in the SWAT team and support overhead from Spokane County’s Sheriff helicopter “Air 1”. Investigators say that Moore set fire to his truck and then went out into the woods sometime Tuesday night and shot himself.

His body was found by authorities Wednesday morning just after 8 a.m.

Meanwhile Amber, who is nine months pregnant and is due to give birth any day, went into labor when she heard the news about the shooting. Her condition has since been stabilized.

KXLY4's Erik Loney contributed to this report

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