Friend of Santa Maria Woman Killed in Lompoc Speaks Out

Rebecca Yap’s best friend says his mind, feeling, and emotions are in a cluster.

Michael Fordyce spoke exclusively with KCOY 12’s Cory James about losing his best friend.

Fordyce’s eyes welled up talking to Central Coast News. He described what he has been going through as a “nightmare.”

Yap died Monday night after Lompoc resident Clay Murray allegedly shot her in the stomach at his home.

Fordyce said Yap told him before she was shot that she and Murray had gone to Orcutt to drop her son off. He said that they had just gotten back to Murray’s house and were going to barbeque.

Fordyce says that was the last conversation he had with his beloved friend. He said that he and Yap “were going to get a place together and put down some roots, adjust [their] custodies and have [their] kids come live with [them].

KEYT/KCOY/KKFX met Fordyce at his job – the place he was when Yap was fighting for her life less than a few miles away. “I was over here fixing a sprinkler, and I heard the sirens going off three blocks away,” said Fordyce.

He says “right up to last part of her time,” Yap tried to call him but he missed the phone call.

Fordyce describes Yap as being the kind of person that would drop everything for those who she loved.

He says she had “an abundance of energy” and a special relationship with her 12-year-old son.

Fordyce wants her son to know how much he meant to his mother and said “she loved [him] with every muscle of her body” and never stopped talking about him.”

Murray is expected to be in court Nov. 20.