Eyewitnesses recall shooting outside Joplin theater

The prosecution called five eyewitnesses to the fatal shooting of Newton native Derek Moore to testify Tuesday at the first-degree murder trial of Jeffrey Bruner.

Samantha Hughes, an employee of the movie theater complex where the shooting took place the night of Nov. 1, 2013, identified Bruner, 41, as the man she saw “fidgeting” in a car parked outside the theater for an hour or two before the early evening shows let out.

She found that strange enough from her vantage point in the theater box office that she eventually called her manager about him. But as she did, he finally got out of his vehicle and she told the manager that and hung up. Just minutes later she heard shots, looked up and saw Bruner with his arm extended. She said she never saw a gun in his hand because a vehicle was in her line of sight. But she subsequently saw him “making a stomping motion.”

Janet and Juan Montez and their brother-in-law, Claude Cupp, testified that they saw Bruner shoot Moore and then kick him two or three times in the head.

“All of a sudden, he pulls a gun out and just starts shoooting,” Juan Montez said.

He said he shot him two or three times and then stood over Moore’s collapsed body and shot several more times.

“I assumed he pretty much emptied the gun on him,” Montez said.

Afterward, Bruner walked to his car and appeared to throw the gun into the vehicle, Cupp said. Bruner got back out and Cupp started toward him, asking if he still had the gun. Bruner said he did not and took off his jacket to show him.

Cupp and Montez then ordered him to lie down. They said that all the while, Bruner kept trying to explain himself, talking about how his wife should not have done what she did.

Paul Smith, another witness, said the defendant looked at him as he was lying on the ground waiting for police to come and said: “Yeah. I did it. Twenty-one years of marriage and this is what it comes down to.”