By Tracy Record
West Seattle Blog editor
At the Steve Bushaw murder trial, the third day on the witness stand was the final one – unless he’s called back later – for John Sylve, one of two men who confessed to the deadly February 2009 shooting.
On trial are two other men, Bryce Huber and Brandon Chaney, who are charged with first-degree murder though there’s no indication they ever fired a shot. Tuesday’s witnesses also included a woman who was at Talarico’s with Huber the night of the shooting – Super Bowl Sunday 2009 – and a woman who just happened to be at the restaurant/bar when the shooting happened outside and found herself helping tend to Bushaw’s wounds till help arrived.
Sylve’s final hour-plus of testimony consisted of replies to multiple rounds of questioning from all three lawyers – Chaney’s lawyer Jim Roe, Huber’s lawyer Tony Savage, and prosecutor Jeff Baird, all of whom declared “no more questions” just before the usual 10:30 am morning break time.
To recap: The motive for the murder is alleged to trace back to a home-invasion robbery/assault a few weeks earlier. The victim allegedly thought Steve Bushaw masterminded that crime, though he had not been arrested or charged in connection with it. Chaney was living at the victim’s home at the time of the robbery, and was beaten during it.
Savage started the day asking Sylve to go back over some of the events of the night of the shooting. For starters, the trip from the South King County apartment of the other confessed shooter – Danny O’Neal – to a convenience store in West Seattle, where Huber was waiting for them, to talk to Chaney, according to Sylve, about how Huber was going to get Bushaw someplace they could shoot him. Regarding the timetable of the shooting plan, Savage asked, “Did you think this meeting was all set up, that the perpetrator of the robbery was going to be at a specific place and time.”
Sylve replied, “It was in the process of being set up.” But, he went on to say, he believed it was all set up by the time they left the convenience store, which, he said, was about half an hour before the shooting.
Savage then honed in on where Sylve said the getaway car was parked – whether it was in a lot behind the west side of the 4700 block of California, or along the street. “Didn’t you say you parked in a lot?” Sylve: “If I did, I was mistaken.” Savage pulled out a document – the statement Sylve signed when he pleaded guilty in January. “This says you parked in the lot. So, is that a mistake.” Sylve: “We did not park in the lot.”
Huber’s lawyer then moved on to dissecting how Sylve said they were to be notified that Bushaw was at Talarico’s with Huber. Maps/diagrams of the 4700 block of California SW were brought out again. “Would you have been in front of the Husky Ice Cream Deli, or the Taqueria, or Poggie’s?” asked Savage. Sylve indicated a spot we couldn’t quite see from the other side of the courtroom. Then Savage focused on Sylve having said that O’Neal also was supposed to get a call from Chaney, saying that Huber and Bushaw were “exiting the bar.” Sylve said he wasn’t sure if O’Neal ever got that call, and Savage then noted that supposedly Sylve had told O’Neal earlier to turn off his phone, so how would he have gotten a call?
From there, Savage tried to get Sylve to place where Huber was when Bushaw was shot. “He wasn’t walking with Mr. Bushaw, was he?” Then, a contradiction with Sylve’s guilty-plea statement regarding how many shots he fired. “I still believe I fired one shot,” Sylve insisted on the stand, and then said, regarding the statement: “I have to say, I didn’t read over this before I signed off on it.”
“You didn’t read it?” exclaimed Savage.
“Well – I read it .. I didn’t pay close enough attention to get the details correct.”
Back to the actual shooting: Sylve said O’Neal “fired his guns” when Bushaw started to run away with them.
‘So you and Mr. O’Neal are in the middle of the street, blazing away, what next?” Savage asked, shortly presenting an earlier statement he said was made by Sylve, saying that Huber had “peeled away from Bushaw” so as to not be in the line of fire. “What did you mean when you said this?”
Sylve: “I would mean, he made himself scarce.”
Savage: “Doesn’t that suggest to you that Huber was walking across the street with Mr. Bushaw and he peeled away so you wouldn’t shoot him?”
Sylve: “I’d still say he made himself scarce.”
Savage: “How would that put him in the line of fire?”
Sylve: “it wouldn’t.”
Savage: “Then why did you say it?”
This exchange did not have a clear resolution. Immediately afterward, prosecutor Baird moved back in, asking Sylve if the statement in question was something he wrote. No – his lawyer wrote it, he said. Baird then asked, “At the time you signed the plea form, how many documents were there?” More than 10, replied Sylve. “You were asked dozens of questions about how long things took – were you keeping some kind of a log about when things happened that night?”
Sylve: “No.”
Under further questioning from Baird, Sylve said he didn’t know before that night that Huber knew Bushaw, he hadn’t ever been to Talarico’s,
that those involved never discussed “an act of violence that did not involve shooting” (Baird’s phrase), and that no one had suggested trying to get information from Bushaw that night (regarding who was directly involved in the home-invasion robbery).
Chaney’s lawyer Roe picked up there: “But the original plan was to get all of them [who were involved in the robbery], wasn’t that it? Mr. Chaney wanted the men who actually hit him? Mr. Chaney didn’t want the guy who orchestrated it, he wanted the guy who hurt him.”
Roe frequently hammered on what he called the “sweetheart deal” Sylve was getting – his plea bargain to the lesser charge of second-degree murder, repeating that Sylve had to admit to what was in his confession to get that deal.
Then, back to Savage, noting a discrepancy in Sylve’s statement and testimony. “So you lied.” Sylve: “Not a lie, a mistake.” Savage: “Like you made a mistake about parking in the lot.” Sylve: “I’m sure we parked on the street.”
And back to Baird, who went back to the convenience-store discussion between Huber and Chaney, “to get the victim out where we wanted him,” Sylve explained.
Baird: “What was discussed would happen to the victim?”
Sylve: “He would get shot.”
Then Roe, asking basically rhetorically, “Were you part of that discussion?”
Savage had no questions, and that concluded Sylve’s turn on the stand.
After morning break, one of the two women who had accompanied Huber to Talarico’s the night of the shooting, Jennifer, was on the stand. (The other one, her friend Cara from Idaho, had testified last week.) Jennifer described Huber as a “casual acquaintance” she had met a few times, “but not a good friend.” She and Cara were at Huber’s home in North Seattle that day, she said, and ultimately left, all three in her car, “to go out and get drinks.” Huber drove, she said. She wasn’t sure where they were going, she said, but they ended up at Talarico’s, her first time there. (She said she had been in West Seattle maybe once before.)
Baird asked what happened once they arrived. According to Jennifer, all three sat down and ordered drinks. “It was karaoke night, loud, fun, people were having a good time.” She said she was introduced to another man who joined them; aside from that man being white, she said she didn’t remember much. That man and Huber went outside to smoke, while Jennifer and Cara stayed at the table. She said Huber never came back into the bar, and that she never saw the other man again.
“Then what happened?” asked Baird.
“After a while, the music got cut … they said there had been a shooting. Police and all that came.” Jennifer said she hadn’t heard the shooting, and didn’t really see anything in the bar. She and Cara left, she said. “What was going through your mind?” asked Baird. “Somebody’s just been shot at the bar we were at!” Jennifer replied, adding that they didn’t know where Huber was at, and he had her car keys, so they took a cab back to her home. She became emotional at this point: “This isn’t anything we ever thought we’d be around, or experiencing.”
They caught up with Huber at her apartment, she said, and he returned her keys. She said he “seemed a little upset.” And that, she said, was the last time she saw him, until Tuesday in court.
Given the opportunity to question her next, Savage declined, while Roe asked, “Did you ever get a hint there was a plan, or that he was being manipulated in some way” that night? Jennifer said no. Baird then asked if Huber had used his cell phone; Jennifer said she didn’t remember, although Baird pointed out she had made a previous statement saying she did remember him using a cell phone that night.
Her testimony concluded a few minutes before noon, the court’s usual lunch-break time.
On the stand after lunch was Holly, who said she had gone to Talarico’s twice on February 1st, 2009 – first to watch the Super Bowl game, then around 11 pm that night. Sitting with friends, she said, she heard what “sounded like a pop-cap gun, but was very loud .. maybe five pops, from outside.” She went outside to see what was going on.
“What prompted you to go outside?” asked Baird.
“I’m nosy!” she explained.
Baird put up the diagram of the streetscape along the 4700 block of California SW. He asked her what she had seen; she mentioned a bartender telling her to go back inside the bar – actually, she clarified a moment later, shouting for everyone to go inside, because of the gunshots. Asked if she saw anything across the street, she mentioned two men in the passageway area.
After she went back into Talarico’s, she said, “a gentleman came in and said, ‘I’ve been shot’ … he collapsed right in front of us … my roommate and I started applying pressure on the wounds,” with cloth including a shirt she had been wearing and “bar towels” she said people kept bringing up. (Something she had learned about in health class, she explained.) She said she saw a wound on his upper body, and that at some point he “started screaming about the pain in his leg.” She said they tried talking to him, “to try to keep him coherent”; they got him to say his name – “Steven” – his age, that he was from West Seattle, that he was in pain. When Baird finished questioning her, the defense lawyers didn’t have much to ask.
Court then recessed early for the day, because of witness logistics. A police detective is expected to testify Wednesday.
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