There are no outward signs of tragedy at 68 E. College Ave. A couple of pizza boxes are stacked on the porch; a crushed beer can lies nearby. The blood has been cleaned from the front of the two-story house across the street from Frostburg State University.

But for four students who had made their separate ways from Baltimore and Washington to this pastoral college town in Western Maryland, the explosive confrontation during the early morning of April 18 has changed their lives forever.

There is the high school soccer standout from Glen Burnie who had struggled to catch on at a succession of small colleges. The Baltimore woman with whom he tangled at an off-campus party. The basketball player from Washington with whom she had a tumultuous, sometimes violent relationship. And the teammate from Waldorf who joined him last Sunday morning on an outing that would prove fatal.

Now Brandon Carroll, a sophomore forward for the Division III Bobcats, is dead. Classmate Tyrone Hall, who dreamed of international soccer stardom, faces life without parole. And this campus of 5,200 students nestled in the mountains of Allegany County is left with unanswered — perhaps unanswerable — questions.

"Everything that I've heard, everything that I knew about them, these were not violent people," Frostburg State University President Jonathan C. Gibralter said last week.

"They were from very loving and supportive families, very kind," he said. "The thing that shocks us the most is that we don't know where this came from."

Students packed the arena in which Carroll once competed for a candlelight vigil last week to honor his memory. Gibralter's voice had choked with emotion as he spoke to a crowd that included Carroll's mother and stepfather. But after the service, Gibralter expressed compassion for Hall.

"What would compel somebody to pull out a gun?" the university president asked. "I can only imagine how much fear he must have felt at that moment."

Police and campus sources say the confrontation grew out of an altercation between Hall and former Frostburg student Patrice Britton. But it appears to have had its genesis in a relationship that began months earlier, on another campus, hundreds of miles away.

Britton, a 20-year-old from the Gwynn Oak neighborhood of West Baltimore, came to Frostburg last spring from St. Augustine's College in Raleigh, N.C. It was there that she started dating fellow student Ellis Hartridge Jr., a near-neighbor from Washington.

The relationship continued after she transferred, and last fall, Hartridge followed Britton to Frostburg. The couple shared an off-campus apartment; Hartridge, 21, enrolled in the college as a junior, joined the basketball team and worked his way into the starting lineup.

But while Hartridge was establishing himself on the court, he was having trouble at home with Britton. In early December, she filed a protective order against him, alleging that he had been physically violent with her. Three days later, he filed a similar request, making similar allegations.

Britton admitted kneeing Hartridge after being pushed and choked, according to court documents. He admitted pushing her after she slapped him in the mouth and hit him in the head with a liquor bottle.

Frostburg coach Webb Hatch said Hartridge told him of his domestic difficulties around the middle of December.

"He had come to me and said he had some issues, that ‘this young lady and I are not getting along,' " Hatch said. "They had made decisions to part company. He didn't tell me what her name was. I didn't want to know what her name was."

Hartridge would eventually file a police complaint against Britton. He told them she had damaged more than a dozen T-shirts and a sweater of his.

"She broke into my room and cut holes," he wrote in the complaint. "The holes were cut out right on the left side of each T-shirt where my heart would be."

Britton was charged with fourth-degree burglary, malicious destruction of property, violating the protective order and harassment.

Hall's dream

Less clear is Britton's relationship with Hall.

A graduate of Mount St. Joseph, the 21-year-old Hall had shown promise in soccer. Playing on high-level club teams in Maryland, he traveled across the country and overseas; a YouTube video shows him with a Bethesda club team on a tour of England.

One former coach said Hall obsessed about being an international star, to the point of referring to himself on his Facebook page as Tyrinho, in the manner of the single-named stars of Brazil.

"He was like a lot of kids, he had illusions of being a little better than he was," said Chris Barrett, an assistant coach at Division I Radford University in Virginia, where Hall worked out with the team while attending school there last spring.

"He [thought he] was headed to the pro contract, headed to Brazil, depending on who he told," Barrett said. "He had some potential, he was very talented. He really wanted to be a professional soccer player, but the academics held him up here."

Hall left Radford after failing to gain NCAA eligibility. Barrett said Hall submitted paperwork to a couple of big-time Division I programs, but no offers were forthcoming.

"At that time, Tyrone really needed to mature about the reality that he was probably not going to be a pro soccer player in Brazil," Barrett said. "He needed to worry about getting his degree and, like the [NCAA] commercial says, ‘Be a professional in something else.' "

But the dream apparently would not die. Radford had been Hall's second stop in the search for a college at which he could play, after a year at Division II Limestone College in Gaffney, S.C. Division III Frostburg would be his third.

After arriving on campus last fall, Hall contacted soccer coach Keith Byrnes, who remembered watching the slick-footed midfielder play in tournaments when Hall was in high school. Byrnes says he understood that Hall had some work to do to regain his eligibility.

"It was kind of a wait-and-see," Byrnes said. "If he kept his skills up, I thought he could help us."

Then came April 17, and the off-campus party at which Britton saw Hall dancing with a woman. Hall told police that Britton pushed him in the face, then pushed the woman he was dancing with, resulting in a scuffle. As Hall and several of his friends were being made to leave the party, there was some back and forth between Hall and Britton. Brandon Carroll was there watching, according to a student who attended the party.

Like the others, the 20-year-old Carroll was a transfer student, from St. Vincent's College in Latrobe, Pa. Unlike Hartridge, he had yet to see much playing time for the Bobcats. But Hatch said Carroll rode the bench without complaint.

"His upside was huge," Hatch said. The coach met with the player three days before his death to review the season. "I told him, ‘I'm really expecting you to contribute next year.' "

Hatch, who has coached basketball for more than 30 years on the high school and college level, described both Carroll and Hartridge as exemplary players and students.

Early in the morning of April 18 — hours after the party — Hartridge telephoned Hall. Hartridge, who had moved out of the apartment he shared with Britton, said he wanted to come to the house at 68 E. College Ave. to talk about his former girlfriend. Four of Hall's friends were at the house with him and two of them got on the phone and tried to defuse the situation.

Hartridge arrived with Carroll and another man shortly before 4 a.m. Hall came to the door, police say, with a 12-gauge shotgun on his shoulder. Hall told police that Hartridge lunged at him twice, and Hall fired, hitting him in the hip. Hall said Carroll then lunged at him, and he pulled the trigger again, blasting Carroll in the abdomen.

Carroll and Hartridge were taken by ambulance to the Western Maryland Regional Medical Center in Cumberland. Carroll died at the hospital a short time later. Hartridge is expected to recover.

Police say Hall waited in his home until police arrived. The high school soccer star has been charged with first-degree murder, attempted murder and two counts of assault. He is being held without bail at the Allegany County Detention Center in Cumberland.

‘Spread peace'

Two nights after the fatal confrontation, some 2,500 mourners joined in the candlelight procession from the Upper Quad on the Frostburg campus to the vigil in Bobcat Arena. Carroll's great aunt Juanita Terrell implored the students "to use this terrible tragedy to pick up the torch and spread peace."

Frostburg sophomore Maurice Williams, a teammate and Carroll's best friend, surveyed the crowd.

"He told me his dream was to fill this gym," Williams said. "Even if this isn't a basketball game, this fulfills his legacy."

Terrell said after the vigil that Carroll's family would have no further comment. Britton, who is no longer enrolled at Frostburg, could not be reached; Hartridge's family declined to comment.

As teary-eyed students filed out of the service, the university president tried to piece together what had led to the tragedy.

"I think it was a matter of some intense emotionality, the matter of the heart, over a woman," Gibraltar said. "And I think it was outright fear. Fear on all their parts and an inability to know how to express that fear appropriately."

Williams is having trouble squaring his friend's violent end with the ordinarily serene life on this usually peaceful campus.

"When you pack up for school, you pack up certain things," he said. "The last thing you think anyone would pack is a shotgun."