Defendant denies intent to kill MSSU coach

JOPLIN, Mo. — Jeffrey Bruner testified Wednesday that he has little memory of killing Derek Moore.

“I remember seeing the gun come out and remember seeing one or two shots and hearing three,” Bruner told jurors on the second day of his trial on first-degree murder charges.

The 41-year-old water plant operator said it was like his field of vision was “closing in” on him and “everything was getting farther and farther away” during his confrontation with Moore and his estranged wife outside the movie theater complex at Northpark Mall in Joplin.

“It was like I was blacking out or something,” he told the court.

He denied having any memory of standing over Moore — after he collapsed to the pavement from the first shots — and emptying the fully loaded .380-caliber Ruger LCP handgun into him, seven shots in all, six of which struck the victim, according to other testimony.

Bruner also denied any recollection of kicking the Missouri Southern State University assistant football coach in the head two or three times after shooting him and then walking away to his vehicle, as witnesses have testified. He said it was not until he found himself in the driver’s seat of his vehicle that some lucidity returned to him.

The defendant denied going to the theater complex with any intention of killing Moore, who was out on a date with Bruner’s estranged wife on Nov. 1, 2013.

“I just wanted to talk to my wife, to save our marriage, to keep her from going down this road she was going down,” Bruner said.

Before Bruner took the stand, his wife, who now goes by her maiden name, Dawn Michelle Hale, and a psychologist were called as witnesses by the defense.

One of the more dramatic moments of the day came when Hale broke down on the witness stand after being asked by defense attorney Ross Rhoades whose cellphone was used to take the picture of her and Moore that was posted on Facebook and led to the shooting.

The question drew a lengthy pause and sobbing from the witness during which Moore’s mother became upset, stood up suddenly and left the courtroom. The victim’s brother followed her out into the hallway, and Circuit Judge Gayle Crane called a recess to allow the witness to regain her composure and return to the stand.

Hale then testified that Moore asked a woman behind them in the ticket line at the theater complex to take the photo.

“The picture was taken by Derek’s phone, and he uploaded it to Facebook,” she said.

The defense called Hale as a witness in an effort to show that her infidelity played a significant role in the shooting. Under direct examination by Rhoades, she acknowledged three previous affairs while married to Bruner. She also acknowledged having moved just a couple of weeks before the shooting and having begun dating Moore. She said she told Bruner she was in another relationship.

“Did you at any time prior to Nov. 1, 2013, tell your husband that you were having a sexual relationship with this fellow you told him you were having a relationship with?” Rhoades asked.

“No,” she said.

Jeffrey Bruner testified his wife had four affairs prior to her involvement with Moore. There had been a friend of theirs when they lived in Springfield, a couple of deputies when she worked as a reserve officer in the Lawrence County Sheriff’s Department, and a fellow officer while working for MSSU campus police.

Each had been a source of stress for him because his Baptist faith had instilled the belief “that marriage is between a man and a woman for lifetime,” he said. But she always ended up telling him about the affairs and would apologize, and he always forgave her, he told the court.

But she moved out in the middle of October 2013, telling him that there wasn’t anyone else and she wasn’t planning to divorce him. She said she just “needed space,” he testified. He said he actually was over at her apartment as often as she would let him in the couple of weeks prior to the shooting and even slept with her there two or three nights.

The defendant testified that while she had mentioned going to lunch with a coach at MSSU, he took that as an innocent interaction with a co-worker and not the start of another affair. He said he did not even know who Moore was before the night of the shooting.

Bruner acknowledged being “stunned” by the photo posted on Facebook in which Moore had an arm around his wife and both were smiling. But he denied making the statements his 14-year-old daughter had testified that he made in reaction to the photo.

“I was hurt,” he said. “I was angry. I felt betrayed.”

He said he told his daughter that what her mother was doing was wrong. But he denied saying to her that he was going to kill a man, that he would be going to jail and that by the end of the night, she would no longer have either a mother or a father.

Bruner said what he actually told her was something like: “It’s not like I’m going to kill the guy.” He said the statement was made in a semi-joking manner and that he’d said in a similar tone that it would be just like her mother to try to put him in jail.

Kent Franks, a psychologist who interviewed, tested and evaluated the defendant in December, testified that he believes Bruner suffered an acute stress disorder when he confronted his wife and Moore outside the theater. He described the disorder as an abnormal stress reaction to a life-threatening situation. He said such reactions involve depersonalization and dissociation, psychological terms for sensations of being in a surreal environment, removing yourself from a situation as it is happening and watching yourself act from a distance.

Franks said that at the moment that the defendant was experiencing this acute stress disorder, his ability to deliberate would have been significantly diminished.

Bruner told the court that Moore, who was much larger than him, kept backing him up as he tried to talk to his wife outside the theater and kept asking: “Who the f--- are you?” He said his wife stepped between them, put her hand on Moore’s chest as Moore told him: “I’m not from here, m-----f-----. I’ll have your throat slit within two hours.”

Franks testified that he believes the defendant’s moment of dissociation began with that threat.

Assistant Prosecutor Norman Rouse asked the psychologist if the daughter’s testimony that the photo made her father angry and that his subsequent actions of going home to get two fully loaded handguns and even a spare clip and take them with him to the theater complex do not suggest that he was acting out of anger and not fear.

“But I believe his predominant emotion was fear,” Franks said in response.

Bruner claimed Moore made “some kind of motion” turning toward him a final time and saying: “You don’t know who you’re f------ messing with.” The defendant said it appeared to him to be “a fighting stance” with his hands.

“Are you telling the jury now that because Derek Moore put his hands up, you shot him?” Rouse asked.

“I’m just telling you what I feared,” the defendant said.

The defense has yet to rest in the trial, which is set to resume at 10:30 a.m. Thursday in Jasper County Circuit Court in Joplin.