In the weeks before Keland Hill killed his estranged wife in front of their children outside an elementary school in Vancouver, he had been arrested twice for domestic violence, tried to buy a gun and appeared to be tracking his wife’s movements with a GPS monitor placed on her car.

Shortly before the fatal shooting last week, a Clark County prosecutor had asked to increase Hill’s bail to $2 million to keep him in jail, but a judge denied the request.

Tiffany Hill had been trying to leave her husband and was scared of what he would do, Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Lauren Boyd told The Oregonian/OregonLive.

“I was very concerned how quickly this was escalating,” Boyd said. “She had fear she would be killed by him — she was telling us she was in danger.”

“When someone is leaving their abuser, that is the most dangerous time for that person,” she said.

Court records mark Keland Hill’s increasingly menacing behavior as he stalked his wife and repeatedly violated orders to stay away from her.

He was first arrested on Sept. 11 at the couple’s Vancouver home and charged with fourth-degree assault and interfering with reporting domestic violence.

A probable cause statement shows that one of the couple’s children called a relative and said her mother had been thrown to the ground. When a Clark County sheriff’s deputy arrived, Tiffany Hill told him that her husband had pushed her into the wall, causing her to hit her head and giving her a “goose egg.”

Tiffany Hill reported that she tried to dial 911, but Keland Hill took the phone out of her hands. She also told their smart speaker Alexa to call 911 but her husband unplugged the device, she said.

At that time, Keland Hill admitted to pushing Tiffany Hill into the wall, but he didn’t acknowledge interfering when his wife tried to call for help.

The next day, a Clark County judge issued a no-contact order to Keland Hill, saying he couldn’t come within 250 feet of his wife or contact her in person or by phone. The judge also barred him from buying or possessing a gun.

On Oct. 6, Keland Hill went to a Walmart in Northeast Portland and tried to buy a gun, according to a probable cause statement. Hill was denied after a background check and a store employee called the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office.

Hill “did not seem shocked but was just frustrated” at the denial, a deputy wrote in the statement. Hill told the store employee that he was trying to buy a gun to “take care of ‘vermin’ on his property.”

On Oct. 10, Keland Hill showed up at the Peachtree restaurant in Vancouver where Tiffany Hill was attending a parent teacher association meeting for her children’s school, court documents show. When Tiffany Hill and several friends left the restaurant at the end of the meeting, they ran into Keland Hill in the parking lot.

Keland Hill confronted his wife about not letting him see their three young children, but then recognized one of the people with her and ran away, according to the documents.

On Nov. 7, Keland Hill violated the order again. His wife was at a Thai restaurant when she saw him walk inside. Tiffany Hill called 911 and deputies came to the scene.

They found Keland Hill in his car nearby and stopped him. Hill told them that he had gone to the restaurant to get a to-go order and didn’t know Tiffany Hill was going to be there.

Deputies went back to the restaurant to talk to Tiffany Hill, who told them that this was the second time that day her husband had shown up at the same place she was. She said about an hour earlier, she had gone to Wendy’s to pick up a meal for their children and saw her husband.

Deputies searched Tiffany Hill’s car at the Thai restaurant and discovered a black box attached to the underside with magnets and a GPS tracker inside, court documents indicate. They went looking again for Keland Hill again and found him at a bowling alley.

When they asked Keland Hill to come outside and speak with them, a deputy reported seeing Hill pull an iPhone from his pocket and delete an app.

Hill was arrested again and charged with felony stalking and a no-contact order violation.

On Nov. 8, Keland Hill appeared in court on the stalking charge and bail was set at $75,000.

That same day, Tiffany Hill disclosed to authorities that Hill had also violated the no-contact order by texting her repeatedly. She filled out a domestic violence victim statement as well as a danger assessment to determine how much of a threat Keland Hill was to her.

Keland Hill scored a 31 -- an extreme risk, said Boyd.

In the assessment, Tiffany Hill said her husband had recently threatened to use a weapon against her or others, threatened to kill her and himself, destroyed property, spied on her or stalked her and tried to control her daily activities.

She also noted that Keland Hill had previously been arrested for domestic violence crimes against her in Maryland and North Carolina, but those cases had been dismissed.

On Nov. 13, Boyd filed a motion with the Washington Superior Court to raise Keland Hill’s bail from $75,000 to $2 million.

Boyd said the state elevated Keland’s Hill initial misdemeanor assault charge from the Sept. 11 attack to felony second-degree assault after receiving Tiffany Hill’s medical records showing she had suffered a concussion then.

Judge John Fairgrieve tripled the bail to $250,000 but didn’t go for the amount Boyd said she thought Keland Hill wouldn’t be able to post.

It was a tough ask given that Keland Hill didn’t have record of criminal convictions, Boyd said. But she said what happened next shows the need to change laws governing bail in dangerous domestic violence cases.

“When someone has been arrested for a domestic violence offense and a court restricts their access to firearms, they should lose the right to bail if they try to purchase a gun,” she said. “Trying to possess a firearm is a big indicator that the abuser is a threat to the victim’s life.”

Boyd said she didn’t know how Keland Hill got the gun he used to kill Tiffany Hill.

On Nov. 21, Keland Hill posted bail and was released from the Clark County jail.

Five days later on Nov. 26, he had a hearing and asked for permission to travel to Hood River and White Salmon for work. A judge granted his request.

That afternoon, Keland Hill drove to Sarah J. Anderson Elementary School. He shot Tiffany Hill as she sat in her car in the parking lot after school was out. Her mother was in the car, as were all three of the couple’s children. Her mother was wounded but survived. The kids were physically unhurt.

Keland Hill drove a few miles away and shot himself in the head.

Tiffany Hill’s sister, Tabitha Ojeda, started a gofundme page to raise money to bring the children to New York to live with family, as well as to bring Tiffany Hill’s body to New York. As of Tuesday, people had donated more than $92,000.

On her Facebook page, Tiffany Hill said she was a Marine veteran and worked for a company that sells scented waxes.

In one of her court statements, she said her husband had no regard for the law and was trying to get to her at any cost. She was frightened for both herself and her kids.

“It’s all a game to him and I’m the one who’s going to lose,” Tiffany Hill wrote. “It’s only a matter of time.”

—Jayati Ramakrishnan; 503-221-4320; jramakrishnan@oregonian.com; @JRamakrishnanOR

Visit subscription.oregonlive.com/newsletters to get Oregonian/OregonLive journalism delivered to your email inbox.