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

The Steven Jones murder trial is in its third week of testimony in Coconino County courthouse in Flagstaff.

FLAGSTAFF — “How did you know you were shot?” the prosecutor asked.

“Do you want me to explain?” the young man answered.

“It’s the most intense pain you’ve ever felt in your life.”

The Steven Jones murder trial is in its third week of testimony in the Coconino County courthouse in Flagstaff. The prosecution was expected to rest its case Thursday.

On Wednesday, two of the shooting victims took the stand.

WATCH: NAU shooting trial of Steven Jones

Nick Prato was at the off-campus party in the early-morning hours of Oct. 9, 2015, where Jones and his victims first encountered each other. But Prato was not involved in the verbal altercation that led to the shooting of four Northern Arizona University students.

Colin Brough died of gunshot wounds. His friends, Nick Piring, Kyle Zientek and Prato, were wounded. All were 20 years old at the time.

Zientek testified Wednesday afternoon, though he remembered little more than “still pictures” of the shooting and a long recovery from his wounds. But the testimony was compelling nonetheless.

Jones, now 20, is charged with first-degree murder and aggravated assault. He claims he fired in self-defense.

‘I saw the gun pulled on me’

Prato described watching from across the street as a flashlight beam moved across an NAU parking lot toward Brough and Piring, who were standing at the far end. It would turn out that the light was affixed to the barrel of Jones’ 9mm Glock pistol.

The NAU shooting

When he heard the shots, Prato ran toward them.

He found Brough lying on his back on the pavement, and he took him in his arms.

“He was on his back. His shirt was covered with blood,” Prato quietly told the jury. “His eyes were wide open. He was looking up at the sky. He didn’t say a word.”

Then Prato said he tried to get a look at the shooter, Jones, who was either kneeling or sitting on the ground some feet away, where he had been knocked down by other bystanders.

“I’d never seen him before in my life,” Prato said.

But he saw him reach behind his back.

“I took a couple steps forward. I saw the gun pulled on me. That’s all I remember.”

Prato was shot in the neck. He clamped his hand over the wound and ran back to the apartment complex to wait for an ambulance.

Brough died from his wounds.

‘I was scared I was going to get shot’

It was not the only vivid testimony of the morning.

NAU student Nick Pletke testified that he heard yelling near the Mountain View dormitory that abuts the parking lot, and saw his friends Brough and Piring on the sidewalk in front of a dorm.

He heard an argument but said he didn’t see anyone punching or pushing.

Then he saw the flashlight shine on Brough.

Pletke said he began walking toward Brough at a fast pace when he heard “boom, boom,” which sounded like a cap gun going off.

MORE: What happened the night Colin Brough died on NAU campus

Afraid the shooter was going to shoot again, Pletke ran at him and managed to get a choke hold around his neck.

But when the shooter reached for the gun in his belt, Pletke said he ran, tripping over a curb and then hiding behind a truck parked close by.

“I was scared I was going to get shot,” he said.

Pletke testified that earlier that evening, he saw four pledges from another fraternity, one of whom was African-American, come into the center patio area between the courtyard buildings. He politely told them to leave and went back into Brough and Piring’s apartment, where he said 15 to 20 people had gathered to hang out.

After five or 10 minutes, he said, the four pledges were still outside and he told them to leave again.

On cross-examination, he was unable to say if the four people he chased from the party were the same people involved in the altercation that led to the shooting.

Jones was with two other young men, not three. All of them are white.

Witness testimonies vary

The fraternity brothers described smaller numbers of people present at the party, and they didn’t see that there were any punches thrown, other than the sucker punch one partygoer threw at Jones early in the altercation.

Jones’ two friends — who did not think Jones was ultimately justified in shooting — described being pushed to the ground and having others throw drunken punches at them.

Pletke testified that he saw Brough and Piring standing 10 feet away from Jones when they were shot. But a medical examiner said last week that the muzzle of Jones’ gun was no more than 2 feet away from Brough when it fired.

Defense attorneys Burgess McCowan and Joshua Davidson have begun questioning whether the fraternity brothers are synchronizing their stories.

On Tuesday, 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 Wednesday, 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.”

The prosecutors then called a police officer as a witness to show body-camera video from the night of the shooting. In it, Prato audibly describes Jones while waiting to be taken away in an ambulance.

When Zientek came to the stand, he admitted up front that he had very little memory of the traumatic night. He trembled visibly as he testified.

He had left the party at the courtyard because he heard a commotion, he said, and like the others, wanted to see what was going on.

But instead of recollections, “It’s mostly like still pictures,” he told the jury.

In one picture, he saw Brough and Piring standing near each other, he said. In another, Brough falls “like a statute knocked down.”

When he saw the light on Jones’ weapon, Zientek said, “I decided to turn around and tried to run away.”

The bullets hit him in the back and buttocks. He took one or two more steps and dropped to the ground, unable to move. And he had just a few more “still pictures” of being in the ambulance and then waking up days later in the hospital.

Two surgeons who tended to him in the hospital testified Tuesday that they had had to resection Zientek’s bowels, repair holes in his liver and remove a kidney.

The prosecution will call its last witness Thursday. The defense is expected to start its case Thursday afternoon.

Reach the reporter at 602-444-8072 or [email protected].

READ MORE:

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

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

Did ‘sucker punch’ start the fight?

Medical examiner: Gun muzzle no more than 2 feet from first victim

Murder or self-defense? What happened the night Colin Brough died on NAU campus

Timeline: The shooting at Northern Arizona University

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