NAU shooting defendant Steven Jones takes stand, says he feared for his life

Steven Jones took the stand in his own defense during the NAU shooting trial, testifying that he had been accosted for no reason and feared for his life when he shot four other students, one fatally.

FLAGSTAFF — When Steven Jones saw the lights of the police car, he thought it was over.

“I was really relieved,” he said. “The cops are here. I’m safe now.”

He walked toward the first police officer with his hands up. The officer pointed a rifle at him.

“Where’s the shooter?” he asked.

“I am the shooter,” Jones said he answered.

It was not over. It was just beginning.

The NAU shooting

Jones was taken into custody and eventually charged with first-degree murder and aggravated assault. Four Northern Arizona University students had been shot, one of them bleeding to death at the scene of the Oct. 9, 2015, shooting. Jones claims he fired in self-defense.

Jones, 20, took the stand Thursday afternoon in Coconino County Superior Court to defend that claim.

After three weeks of testimony, the trial is winding down. The prosecution rested its case Thursday morning. The defense will likely rest Friday. Until the last moment, it was a secret whether Jones would testify at all.

The story Jones told Thursday was mostly consistent with what he told police after the shooting. He said he and two friends were walking from a party when they stopped in front of an apartment complex just off campus known as the Courtyard.

They stopped as one tried to call a fourth friend on the phone. Then they decided just to go over to the Mountain View dorm across the street from the Courtyard.

“I heard a commotion,” Jones said on the stand. It had been quiet, and then suddenly he heard voices — “A whole lot of dudes yelling, and then I got punched.”

“It really rocked my world,” Jones testified.

At one point, defense attorney Joshua Davidson asked, “Had you done anything to provoke these guys?”

“Nothing whatsoever,” Jones replied.

Jones was dressed in a dark suit and a white shirt. He spoke in a small voice, even when talking about the panic and hysteria he said he felt before and after the shooting.

After the punch, Jones said his vision went dark, then he saw white. As his vision started to return to normal, he said, “I caught myself by my hands.” Then he said he felt someone grab the back of his shirt, and he ran. As he bolted, he said he heard people around him yelling, “What the f–k  are you doing here? Go back to the freshman dorm. I’ll f–k you up.”

Jones said as he ran, he thought three or four people were chasing him. He ran toward the dorm, thinking that brothers from the fraternity where he had pledged would protect him. Then he realized his ID card wouldn’t let him into the dorm, so he ran to his car instead. He thought they were still chasing him.

“I was kind of panicked,” he said. “I was really scared and freaking out.”

The electronic door opener to his car had separated from his keys. He found the clicker in a back pocket and “I started mashing buttons,” he said. The car opened, but he still couldn’t find the ignition key.

That’s when he grabbed the gun from the glove box.

“When I got the gun, I instinctively chambered a round,” he testified. He said he yelled, “Get on the ground. Don’t f–king move. I have a gun.”

Evidence had already shown Jones walked at least 90 feet across the parking lot after leaving his car. On questioning by his attorney Davidson, he said it seemed like a handful of steps.

Two of those chasing him came toward him, he said.

“The one on the right said, ‘I’ll f–king kill you.’ The one on the left called me a p–sy,” he testified. He said the one on the right charged, and he fired. He said they came at him with their hands up, running as fast as they could, “looking me dead in the eye.”

“I knew if I waited another second I’d be seriously hurt, because they were right there,” Jones said.

He shot them both twice. The one on the right, Colin Brough, died of his wounds. The other young man, Nick Piring, was wounded.

Then, Jones said, he went over and bent over Brough, cradled his head and tried to apply pressure to his wound. He said he was jumped at that point by several others.

Jones testified they put him in a headlock, were twisting his arm, and one of them was trying to grab his gun from his waistband where he had placed it. Then, he said, he pulled his gun. “I fired in the air to try to get them to run away,” he testified.

He claimed not to have realized that he had shot two others in the process.

Jones said he then backed up a slight hill and “a short guy,” later identified as Chase Jones, tapped him on the shoulder and told him it was safe to put down the gun. That is when he saw the police lights.

The defense team showed multiple photos Thursday depicting injuries that Jones received in the altercations. They showed red marks on his temple, blood on his lips, a scraped knee, a scraped thumb, bruises, scrapes and cuts on an elbow and a bruise on his shoulder. He also said he suffered injuries to two teeth, one of which later died.

On cross-examination, prosecutor Ammon Barker pointed out inconsistencies in Jones’ testimony. The trial has been all about inconsistencies in testimony among the various witnesses: Brough’s friends, Jones’ friends and uninvolved bystanders who witnessed the shootings or their aftermath.

Jones said repeatedly that his attackers said they were going to “kill” him, but Barker made Jones admit no one else testified to hearing the word “kill” during the course of the trial.

Barker questioned how the 90 feet that Jones walked from his car before he shot Brough and Piring could have seemed like 10 or 15 feet. And he asked how Jones could have seen that his two friends were in trouble when it was dark and Jones was without his glasses.

Both friends have already testified that they were under attack but did not think it was a life-threatening situation.

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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