Victim’s dad decries 6-year term: ‘It sucks’
Father speaks about NAU shooting and son’s killer
FLAGSTAFF — The father of a Northern Arizona University student killed in a 2015 campus shooting has said little about the crime since it happened.
Now that Doug Brough can speak about the tragedy, he doesn’t mince words.
About Steven Jones, the former NAU student who shot Brough’s 20-year-old son, Colin:
“He’s always been a cocky, arrogant, SOB in everything he’s done.”
About Jones’ final words to the judge, when the 23-year-old said that if he could trade places with Colin Brough he would:
“He’s lying. He never apologized to anybody until (his sentencing). Because he had to get his reduced sentence.”
About the 6-year prison sentence Jones received on Feb. 11, after pleading guilty to manslaughter and aggravated assault charges:
“It sucks.”
Brough and his wife, Claudia, have been a constant presence at Coconino County Superior Court since the October 2015 shooting that killed their son and seriously injured three other NAU students.
They traveled multiple times to Flagstaff from their Colorado home for court hearings and the first trial, which ended
in May 2017 in a hung jury.
“Claudia and I are the only ones who can represent Colin because he’s not here . ... We were his voice, we were his ears, his eyes,” Brough said.
The shooting devastated the closeknit family, he told Judge Dan Slayton at the Feb. 11 sentencing hearing. In one of the day-long hearing’s more poignant moments, Claudia Brough told the judge through tears that following Colin’s death she had two nervous breakdowns, suffered from depression and tried to end her life.
An attempt to kill herself left her in a coma. She could hear her family encouraging her, but couldn’t communicate as she lay in a hospital bed with a feeding tube down her throat.
“They were saying, ‘Mom, you can do this. We need you. We love you,’ ” she told the judge.
Doug Brough’s eyes were weary, but his voice flashed with anger as he reflected on the case in the office of prominent Flagstaff attorney, Lou Diesel, who has represented the family throughout the proceedings.
Not a day goes by that he hasn’t cried. But he also projected a sense of relief that the family won’t face a second criminal trial.
‘There’s a guy outside and he’s shooting people’
When his son decided to attend NAU in the fall of 2013, he and his wife never gave thought to the fact that state law allows concealed guns on Arizona campuses — as long as they are stored in locked vehicles and not visible from outside.
They worried about more practical matters: Did their son have a microwave? Did he have the right computer?
Colin Brough had a big grin and mop of shaggy hair. He majored in business and joined the Delta Chi fraternity. An avid lacrosse player and snowboarder, he also worked as a lifeguard at a Flagstaff pool.
In fall 2015, he had just started his junior year and was living with a couple of friends in an off-campus apartment complex known as “the Courtyard,” which had a reputation as a party spot.
In the early-morning hours of Oct. 9, students who lived nearby awoke to what sounded like fireworks.
“There’s a guy outside and he’s shooting people,” a student watching the scene from a dorm window told a 911 dispatcher.
Police swarmed the scene. Jones, an 18-year-old freshman, had already put down the gun at the urging of another student. He walked with his hands up toward the first police officer he saw.
The officer pointed a rifle at him and said, “Where’s the shooter?”
“I am the shooter,” Jones answered. He had shot four students, one of them fatally.
The news of the shooting spread quickly by text message and Twitter. Anxious parents tried to reach their children to make sure they were all right.
Doug Brough tried to get through to his son. He got no answer, so he texted him. And texted him. He never heard back.
Colin Brough had been shot twice, in his chest and shoulder. One bullet severed a vein and an artery into the heart, causing him to rapidly bleed to death.
‘He had an aura that just lifted the whole room’
The Brough family left for Flagstaff. The next day, Doug and Claudia visited the parking lot where their son had died. Two flickering candles marked the spot.
Doug was unable to hold back sobs as he talked for a few minutes with a reporter and photographer at the scene.
“I just wish I could talk to him,” he said.
The campus was nearly deserted the day after the shooting; many students didn’t have class on that Friday. Those who witnessed or heard the shots went home for a long weekend.
NAU police released scant details. They described it as a confrontation between “student groups” that resulted in Jones retrieving a gun and firing, striking four people at about 1:20 a.m.
Jones admitted to firing the shots and said he acted alone. Prosecutors charged him with first-degree murder and aggravated assault.
The shooting rocked the Flagstaff community. It was the first school shooting in NAU’s 116-year history. Even students who didn’t know the victims said the violence left them sad and unnerved.
The Brough family held Colin’s funeral the following week in Annapolis, Maryland, where they had lived before moving to Castle Rock, Colorado, near Denver. Classmates from kindergarten to college recalled a fun-loving person who made his friends feel like family.
“He had an aura that just lifted the whole room,” said childhood friend David Brunk.
Claudia Brough was in shock for weeks. She barely came out of her bedroom. She took books off of shelves and piled them around her, looking for answers.
Grief filled the home, she told the judge at the sentencing hearing. She withdrew from everything, including the people she loved.
More details of the shooting emerged: Jones had injuries to his head, back, chest, arms and knees. His mouth was bloody when he was arrested. Police reports revealed he had been punched before running to his car to retrieve his gun and returned to help two friends. He said he acted in self defense.
Police reports revealed that all four shooting victims were intoxicated the night of the shooting. Colin Brough had a blood-alcohol level of 0.285%, more than three times the legal limit.
Reflecting on that, more than four years later, his father asks two rhetorical questions, “Did you go to college? Did you drink?”
Doug Brough maintains his son was trying to shoo people out of the apartment complex that night so they wouldn’t get fined under the city’s newly passed party ordinance.
Then, Jones and two friends passed the complex while walking home from a party. One of them may have rung a doorbell and told the others to run, a childish prank known as “ding-dong ditch.” That may have sparked the confrontation with Delta Chi fraternity members at the Courtyard party.
‘He pleaded guilty’
The Brough family became active in efforts to support gun control during the more than two years that passed before the criminal trial. They formed an organization in their son’s memory called Live For Colin, advocating for gun-free campuses.
They supported other groups as well, including Everytown for Gun Safety, Moms Demand Action and the Campaign to Keep Guns Off Campus.
The Broughs traveled to Flagstaff for the criminal trial that began April 4, 2017. Defense attorneys argued during the three-week trial that Jones fired in self-defense while prosecutors said his actions were premeditated.
The trial was filled with conflicting accounts of what happened.
Jones and his two friends described being set upon by a mob of mostly drunken and angry fraternity brothers.
The fraternity brothers denied there was any violence on their part after the first sucker punch, but Jones’ friends described being taken to the ground.
Jones said he feared for his life when he fired. But prosecutors say his life was never in danger, calling him an “assassin emerging from the darkness.”
A jury was unable to reach a verdict
after listening to 37 witnesses and deliberating five days. The judge declared a mistrial and set a retrial date for later that year.
The retrial was pushed back five times at the request of the defense for various reasons. The Coconino County Attorney’s Office opposed many of the delays, with Deputy County Attorney Ammon Barker writing in court filings that postponements were a “tremendous emotional weight” on the victims.
A retrial was set for January and prosecutors agreed to reduce the charges to second-degree murder in hopes of avoiding an appeal. A few weeks before the trial was to begin, the Broughs received a call that came as a surprise: Jones had agreed to plead guilty to a reduced charge of manslaughter in exchange for up to 10 years in prison.
For Doug Brough, it meant his family could avoid the pain of a second trial, and there would be no risk of Jones being acquitted.
“He didn’t get what he should have got, but he pleaded guilty,” he said. “My wife was like, ‘That’s what I needed to hear.’ ”
One last court appearance
At the Feb. 11 sentencing family and friends of Jones sat on one side of the courtroom, the victims and supporters on the other. Two of the three surviving victims, Nick Piring and Kyle Zientek, asked the judge to impose the maximum sentence.
The third surviving victim, Nick Prato, chose not to attend because he didn’t want to be in the same room with the defendant. But his parents were there, and an attorney read a statement on his behalf, requesting the maximum sentence.
The Broughs sat with their adult sons, Doug and Ashton, who is known as “Ash.” All of them asked the judge to give Jones 10 years in prison, the maximum allowed under the plea.
The brothers sat silently in the gallery as the family’s attorney read a letter they’d written. They told the judge they lost their best friend and future best man at their weddings. When the family gathers, there is a hole. Something is missing.
Jones will have an opportunity to marry, have children, pursue a career. Their brother will never have a chance to do those things.
The prosecution played a 17-minute slideshow of family photos: Colin as a child, dressed as Batman for Halloween and grinning with his face covered in cake batter. Family and friends wept as the slide show played to Kenny G’s “Theme from Dying Young.” Then Doug Brough spoke.
His voice broke as he recalled the approximately 1,500 nights and mornings since he got the call his son was dead. He expressed regret that defense attorneys bashed Delta Chi, the fraternity his son was a part of, portraying them as bullies.
Claudia Brough read from a prepared speech, choking back sobs. A part of her died the day Colin died, she said. She will never feel whole, she said, “just pasted and glued back together again.”
The Broughs left the courtroom during the defense’s presentation, where attorney Christopher Dupont told the judge that Jones feels “extreme remorse” for shooting four people.
He played a video taken after the shooting of Jones sobbing with his head in his hands. When told one of the students has died, he crouches on the floor in a fetal position, weeping and cries out, “I should have just let them kill me.”
Dupont told the judge that Jones was the subject of three assaults on the night he shot four people and that at least nine people came running out of the Courtyard to participate in the confrontation that led to an unprovoked assault where Jones was punched. Dupont said the victims’ conduct “substantially contributed” to provoking the offense.
During the trial, some witnesses testified that Colin Brough lunged or rushed at Jones when he was shot. Others said he did not. Prosecutors suggested that perhaps Brough tripped and fell. An autopsy report introduced as evidence showed that Brough was 2 feet or closer to the muzzle of Jones’ gun when he fired.
Dupont told the judge at the sentencing hearing, “there are reasons for what he (Jones) did.”
Before being sentenced, Jones addressed the victims and their relatives.
“If it were possible I would in a heartbeat right now trade places with Colin Brough,” Jones said. “If he could be home with his family and I could be dead, I would do that. But that’s not possible.”
Jones faced a minimum of 5 years and a maximum of 10 years in prison under the plea bargain.
Judge Slayton weighted mitigating factors to determine sentence length, such as the Jones having no prior criminal history, showing remorse and having a supportive family. The judge determined there were aggravating factors, such as the ages and number of victims and the emotional and physical harm to the victims.
Slayton said the case has been troubling to the Flagstaff community and “it’s raised a lot of questions in a lot of people’s minds.”
The judge sentenced Jones to six years for the manslaughter charge and five years for the aggravated assault charges and allowed the sentences to run concurrently, meaning Jones will serve no more than six years in prison.
He may end up serving less. He is eligible for release under state law after serving 85% of his sentence, and he gets credit for 212 days already served in jail.
Jones and his family declined through their attorney, Burges McCowan, interview requests from The Arizona Republic.
‘I lost my son for no reason’
The Brough family walked quietly out the courtroom after the sentencing, filing past media and television cameras on the courthouse lawn without stopping.
They headed for the refuge of their attorney’s office in a handsome brick building across the street.
The family had time to gather themselves before they were scheduled to drive to Phoenix for a 10 p.m. flight back to Colorado.
Claudia Brough did not want to say anything more. Doug Brough felt he could finally speak his mind and shared his story with three reporters who had been fixtures at court hearings.
He said the six-year sentence gives him “a little bit” of justice because Jones is going to prison.
“It’s not going to be fun,” he said. “For the rest of his life, he’s a convicted felon.”
He said there was nothing Jones could have said to the family that would have made a difference.
“I lost my son for no reason.”
He said he has two forms of therapy: his 3-year-old granddaughter, Thea, whose smile and love for life reminds him of Colin; and his golden retriever, Lilly Grace.
His immediate plan now that the criminal proceedings are over is to become more active in gun-control efforts.
He hopes he can make a difference to honor his son. He hopes that one day, college campuses can truly be gun-free.
“I’m never going to give up in Colin’s name,” he said. “Now that this is behind us.”
“He didn’t get what he should have got, but he pleaded guilty. My wife was like, ‘That’s what I needed to hear.’ ”
Doug Brough
Upon hearing Steven Jones would plead guilty instead of going through another trial, and there would be no risk of Jones being acquitted
Reporter Anne Ryman has written extensively about the NAU shooting and covered the 2017 trial. Reach her at anne.ryman@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-8072. Follow her on Twitter @anneryman.