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    NAU shooting defendant Steven Jones describes the shooting

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    NAU shooting victim describes moment he was shot

  • Steven Jones' NAU murder trial begins

    Steven Jones’ NAU murder trial begins

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    Steven Jones’ trial in NAU shooting: Prosecution’s opening statement

  • Steven Jones' trial in NAU shooting: Defense's opening statement

    Steven Jones’ trial in NAU shooting: Defense’s opening statement

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    Judge rules on evidence in NAU shooting case

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    Steven Jones weeps as he is granted conditional release until trial

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    NAU Shooting Suspect In Court

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    Body camera video from scene of NAU shooting

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    A haunting 911 call received the night of the NAU shooting

  • A 911 call received the night of the NAU shooting

    A 911 call received the night of the NAU shooting

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    911 calls into NAU Police after shootings

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    Victim’s father: “We got to stop this throughout the country”

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    Candlelight for Colin Brough

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    Prayer vigil for NAU shooting victims

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    Close to home: Students react to NAU shooting

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    Witness Dion Harris at Flagstaff Shooting

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    Reporter Dennis Wagner at the scene of the NAU shooting

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    NAU freshman held in shooting that left 1 student dead, 3 wounded

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    Fatal shooting reported at Northern Arizona University

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Jurors will have to sort through differing witness accounts of what happened in the early morning of Oct. 9 when they consider the first-degree murder charges against former NAU student Steven Jones.

The prosecution and defense are expected to make closing arguments Tuesday  in the trial of Steven Jones, the former Northern Arizona University student who shot four students during an altercation that spilled onto campus in October 2015.

Jurors could begin deliberating as early as Tuesday.

Jones is charged with first-degree murder in the death of Colin Brough, 20, and aggravated assault in the wounding of three other students: Nicholas Piring, Nicholas Prato and Kyle Zientek, all 20 at the time. ?Jones claims he acted in self-defense.

WATCH:NAU shooting trial of Steven Jones

Jurors will have to sort through the different witness accounts of what happened in the early-morning hours of Oct. 9. Stories have varied widely, depending on whether it was Brough’s fraternity brothers, Jones’ companions, or uninvolved bystanders who witnessed the event.

Here are some of the questions jurors will have to sort through:

1. Did Jones and his friends provoke the altercation?

Jones contends he was outside the off-campus apartment complex called the Courtyard with two friends, trying to reach a third friend on the phone. They never reached him.

There was a party going on at the Courtyard. Jones and his two companions were making their way across the road toward the Mountain View dormitory on the NAU campus when they were set upon by a group of young men from the Courtyard.

Jones was punched in the face.

“It just rocked my world,” he testified, saying he and his friends started moving away.

When asked on the witness stand if he had done anything to provoke the incident, Jones responded, “Absolutely not.”

During testimony, one of Brough’s friends, a fraternity brother named Nick Pletke, said that four pledges from another fraternity, one of them African-American, had come into the party uninvited, and he asked them to leave. On cross-examination, Pletke could not say if they were the same young men involved in the confrontation out front. Neither Jones nor his friends are African-American.

Another of the fraternity brothers, Austin Contreras, told a story similar to Pletke’s, except he recalled it was three party crashers. Brough and Piring, he said, asked them to leave. Then the language became less polite.

Jones’ two friends, Shay McConnell and Jacob Mike, denied they ever set foot in the party. McConnell said that Mike might have rung the doorbell of Brough and Piring’s apartment, but Mike did not remember doing so, and Jones said he did not know.

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2. Were the fraternity brothers aggressive?

They said they were not. Jones, McConnell and Mike, and some of the bystanders, said they were.

Both sides testified that plenty of F-words were exchanged, though Jones and company said they mostly came from Brough and his friends.

Jones claimed that Brough and perhaps others said they were going to kill them, but no one else heard those words.

“They were all feeding off each other and were spewing the same stuff,” McConnell said.

Piring said there were “a lot of derogatory terms” and “a lot of chest puffing,” but no fighting.

But Contreras ran up and punched Jones in the face, loosening his teeth and a dental bridge.

Pletke said Nick Prato, one of the men who was shot, was the puncher, but Prato denied it. Contreras admitted on the stand that he himself was the puncher.

The fraternity brothers denied there was any more tussling, but both McConnell and Mike said they were pushed to the ground and that the brothers were throwing drunken punches. However, they claimed on the witness stand that they were not afraid for their lives and did not think Jones needed to do what he did next: run to his car and take a pistol from his glove box.

3. Did Colin Brough lunge at Jones before he was shot?

Autopsy reports showed that Brough was two feet or less away from Jones when he was shot, and the trajectory of the bullets was up to down, meaning that Brough was in a forward position when he was shot.

The NAU shooting

Jones claimed he told Brough and Piring that he had a gun and that they should lay on the ground. McConnell heard Jones say something similar, and Piring thought he heard Jones say “stop” or “back up.”

Jones said Brough threatened to kill him again — which no one else heard — and that Brough bolted toward him, causing him to fire. Then Jones shot Piring, who claimed he was running toward Brough from a distance. Other witnesses put him next to Brough.

Piring said Brough took a few steps but did not lunge. Another fraternity brother named Nick Acevedo said Brough put his hands up in a questioning manner and took a step toward Jones. Prato did not see Brough move at all.

McConnell, however, said Brough lunged “almost like he was going to grab Steven.”

And one of the bystanders who shielded Piring after he was shot said she had seen a “figure in a white shirt,” later identified as Brough, charging past.

4. How did the other two victims get shot?

Jones claimed that he went to render first aid to Brough after he shot him, but was jumped by a sizable mob. He said they were stomping his stomach, bending his arm, putting him in a choke hold and trying to take his gun. Jones testified that he thought if they got control of the gun, they would kill him.

Accounts varied as to how many people tried to subdue Jones. Pletke was one of them, though he downplayed how close he actually got to the gun.

Prato testified that Jones was either seated or kneeling. Prato was unsure how many people were around Jones, but said it could have been one to three people. Prato said he took a couple of steps toward Jones when Jones pulled the gun from behind his back and shot Prato through the neck.

Jones contends he was still on the ground with four or five people piled on him when he fired into the air, without realizing he had wounded two more people: Prato and Zeintek.

Another witness said Jones was on his feet when he shot into the air.

5. Did fraternity brothers synchronize their stories?

Jones’ defense attorneys, Burges McCowan and Joshua Davidson, began asking witnesses for the prosecution if they had talked with each other to present a consistent story as to whether there was aggression on their part, or if Jones and friends had really tried to crash the party.

For example, a witness named Zach Volpo, who was with Pletke when he tried to subdue Jones, said he didn’t contact police after the shooting because, “I wanted to get to the hospital, to my friend, to my brother’s side, to help him fight for his life,” he said. “I was also praying, sir.”

Volpo said he then went to the fraternity house to console and pray with his friends.

Davidson retorted, “You wanted to be with your brothers and pray, or be with your brothers and get your story straight?”

Volpo denied the allegation.

On cross-examination, McCowan pressed Pletke, asking if he had watched any of the live-streamed testimony or if he and Volpo had compared notes, which is not allowed of witnesses. Pletke denied that he had.

Davidson posed the same questions to Prato, asking if he and his friends had fixed their stories.

Davidson held Prato to task for remembering details that he had failed to tell police in the days after the shooting, about seeing Piring jump in the air before he was shot, or about looking Jones in the eyes and being able to describe him.

His memory had failed him then, Prato said, “Because I’d just been shot and I was in shock.”

READ MORE COVERAGE OF THE TRIAL:

APRIL 5:Opening arguments: Was Jones an ‘assassin’ or defending himself?

APRIL 6: NAU shooting victim Nick Piring: ‘I never did see the gun’

APRIL 13: Did ‘sucker punch’ start fight at NAU?

APRIL 14: Medical examiner says gun muzzle no more than 2 feet from first victim

APRIL 19: ‘Most intense pain you’ve ever felt,’ gunshot victim testifies

APRIL 20: Jones takes stand, says he feared for his life

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