NAU shooting victim: ‘I never did see gun’
Witness describes events that left his friend dead
FLAGSTAFF - Nick Piring never saw a gun. He just saw a flashlight. And he didn’t know how the argument started. He just recognized his roommate’s voice: Colin Brough, his best friend and Delta Chi fraternity brother.
Piring gave his dramatic testimony Thursday on the second day of trial for Steven Jones,the former NAU student accused of first-degree murder in the October 2015 death of Brough and aggravated assault against Piring and two other students.
Piring testified he started jogging toward the sound of Brough’s voice from behind his Flagstaff apartment building, running across the street and onto the big sidewalk in front of Mountain View Hall, a sprawling dorm on the Northern Arizona University campus.
Brough, 20, argued with three young men Piring didn’t know. They exchanged “f” words; Brough told the other to leave, they said he couldn’t make them.
Then Piring saw a light from the parking lot.
“I thought it was a ... police officer coming to break up the argument,” he testified before the jury on Thursday.
Brough saw the light, too, And he turned toward it. He took a few steps toward the light, then dropped face first, landing in the parking lot.
Piring didn’t hear the gunshots, and he didn’t know Brough had been fatally wounded. He started to run toward his friend. He jumped over some low bushes. The light turned toward him. It was blinding. Two bullets cut him down. He later learned the light was a flashlight attached to a 40-caliber handgun.
More than 35 witnesses are expected to be called during the five-week trial. Jones is claiming self-defense.
Thursday’s testimony began with a police officer who was one of the first on the scene and showed body-camera footage of the chaos immediately following the shooting. He was followed by a detective who showed computerized photos that allowed the jury to see the shooting scene from different angles.
Piring’s testimony was the most riveting as he described seeing his friend fall. But he wavered on cross examination from defense attorney Joshua Davidson, who read passages from interviews Piring gave in the hospital immediately after the shooting.
“You told police a different story that night, didn’t you?” Davidson said.
At least twice Piring told officers he heard shots, and in his original police statements it appeared he was more involved in the altercation and on the scene longer; even though the incident may have taken only 30 seconds.
He had told police he was trying to calm Brough, and he used the word “we” as if it were more people on the scene.
Davidson also pointed out that in an earlier interview with police, Piring described the individuals that Brough was confronting as non-confrontational and that they said they were leaving.
When confronted about the inconsistencies in his accounts, Piring said, “I was in shock” during his first interview with police in the hospital.
Composed as he testified, Piring said no one was attacking Jones when he shot. And he said that Brough never “lunged” toward Jones, as Jones has contended.
Deputy County Attorney Ammon Barker began redirect questioning with: “Nicholas, let’s bring this back to reality, all right?”
The defense objected immediately, and Judge Dan Slayton ordered the statement stricken from the record.
Barker then got Piring to testify again he did not hear the gunshots that wounded him or Brough.
Davidson said Piring was intoxicated that night, at 21⁄2 times the legal driving limit for alcohol.
Piring testified that he “wasn’t counting” how much he drank at a party earlier in the evening. He said he had mostly beer and “perhaps a couple of shots.”
Piring said he wasn’t driving that night. He maintained he has a good recollection of what happened during the shooting, even though he had been drinking.