Steven Jones takes the stand in his own defense Thursday at his murder trial over a shooting at NAU in 2015 in which he said he was “panicked” and “scared.”
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. 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 selfdefense.
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.