By Tracy Record
West Seattle Blog editor

A tale both chilling and bumbling emerged in court Monday as one of the two confessed triggermen in the February 2009 Steve Bushaw murder spent the entire day on the witness stand.

Opening the second week of testimony in the trial of alleged mastermind Bryce Huber and alleged getaway driver Brandon Chaney, both charged with first-degree murder, John Sylve answered questions about the night of the deadly shooting – including a semi-botched getaway.

As Sylve acknowledged under afternoon questioning by the defense, he changed his story this past January – suddenly striking a plea bargain, admitting to a reduced charge of second-degree murder with firearm enhancement, theoretically bringing a much shorter sentence.

Much of their questioning involved challenges to the times and places he described, all on February 1, 2009. But first – the story he told:

Sylve’s testimony did not resume until quarter till 11 on Monday morning, once it was revealed his street clothes were back at the jail in Kent, while he had already been brought to the Seattle courthouse without them. (The defendants are both appearing daily in street clothes; their appearance is another detail in a case like this, including the fact that the jury is not supposed to see them in cuffs as they are escorted into the courtroom before jurors enter. So there is always a precise order of events when they are brought into and out of court at day’s start and end and before/after breaks.)

One point of policy before we summarize the Monday testimony: There are two men whose names are currently coming up in the case, over and over again. We are not publishing their names because of our policies regarding crime victims and potential-but-uncharged suspects.

To set the stage in the courtroom: More than 20 people were in the gallery (several rows of long wooden benches, spanning the width of the courtroom) on Monday; as they face forward, the 14 jurors are in two rows on the left; the tables with Huber, Chaney, and their lawyers, are in front of the gallery, facing the judge; the prosecutor and the case’s lead detective are to the right, facing the jury box; the witness stand – with Sylve’s lawyer seated next to him, both facing the defendants – to the left of the judge and her staff. Also in court, five armed officers, who are seated except when bringing the defendants in and out of court (and, in this case, the witness).

Resuming testimony, Sylve spoke of a gathering at the apartment of the other confessed triggerman, Danny O’Neal, at which “everyone was on board for retaliation” for a home-invasion robbery/assault. The robbery victim told Sylve he suspected a certain person orchestrated the robbery, but did not say how he knew that. He then said, according to Sylve, that he thought he knew someone who could get in touch with the person who “orchestrated” the break-in. The other person we’re not identifying “hyped it up,” Sylve testified, saying, “if you know the guy, you can’t let him get away with this, or he might do it again.”

No one challenged the concept, Sylve said: “Everybody was on board, there was no voice of reason that we shouldn’t do this, that it was wrong.”

So what were they going to do? First, according to Sylve, a drive-by shooting was suggested: “Get there and out quickly, we were going to shoot him from the car, nobody would see us, we’d get away with it.” At this point, he spoke of O’Neal unloading his gun to “wipe down” all the bullets, before reloading it.

Sylve said he warned the robbery victim that police would come for him first, “it would look like retaliation” for the earlier break-in, so he “couldn’t be here.” Then, according to Sylve, Brandon Chaney made phone calls, not saying who he was calling, but finally announcing that “it’s a go,” that he would receive a call when whomever he had been calling could get (shooting victim Steve Bushaw) where he wanted.

Next came a discussion of what car they would take. Chaney’s car might be a giveaway, Sylve said, because police might recognize it – at the time of the home-invasion robbery, Chaney was living with the robbery victim. O’Neal said they could use his car as long as Chaney drove.

And from there, they headed to West Seattle. Along the way, Sylve said, he turned off his phone and told O’Neal to turn his off; Chaney left his on, and (the other person) didn’t have a phone. Chaney was headed to a convenience store for a rendezvous with the person he had been calling.

Prosecutor Baird: “Is that person in this courtroom?”

Sylve identified Huber.

Once they caught up with Huber at the convenience store, Sylve testified,”The car was turned off and it was discussed that we were really going to do this.” However, he said, Huber did not support the drive-by idea.

He feared he would wind up getting shot.

“Chaney said, ‘well, just get [Bushaw] outside and we’ll deal with that’,” according to Sylve, who said Huber told Chaney he would call when [Bushaw] was coming outside.

Sylve noted that, at that point, he was trying to keep a low profile in the car, still parked outside the convenience store, to avoid having Huber get a good look at him “because I planned on doing the shooting.”

A scouting trip of sorts ensued, with three passes through the 4700 block of California SW, and then a search for an acceptable parking place. They settled on 44th SW, and on the use of the breezeway between Northwest Art and Frame and Puerto Vallarta. Sylve said they walked the parking lot near the breezeway, looking for overhead cameras. He said that he and O’Neal were joined by (the other person).

“What was his role to be?” asked Baird.

“To make sure we didn’t shoot Mr. Huber.”

Then, said Sylve, he told O’Neal “no head shots,” explaining that meant “not to aim for the head, nothing too messy.”

They watched people outside Talarico’s, and saw Huber crossing the street with Bushaw. They got into a car on the street and were in it for “close to 15 minutes.” Then, Sylve testified, he and O’Neal walked toward Bushaw, while Huber stayed back, standing by the car. They asked if he had a lighter. He looked down in his pockets briefly, “then he brought his eyes up and saw me and O’Neal bringing out our guns.”

How close were they to him? asked Baird.

“Real close, like three feet.”

“What was his reaction?” Baird prodded.

“First there was no reaction to me asking for a lighter,” began Sylve. “Then, when he saw the guns starting to point in his direction, big eyes.”

He fired the first shot at Bushaw, from such close range, it was “close enough to touch him with the barrel” of the gun, though Sylve said later that he did not actually put the gun up against Bushaw. O’Neal subsequently fired “more than four” shots,” Sylve testified, and then Bushaw “spun around.”

“When you fired that shot, could you tell where he was hit?” asked Baird.

“I hit him in the shoulder,” Sylve replied. He said he fired one more shot, while “tracking” Bushaw as he ran toward the bar.

“After that first shot, when Mr. Bushaw turned toward the car, then toward the bar, how was he moving?” asked Baird.

“Like he wasn’t shot at all. He kept running until he got to the bar door. He was slouched down on his knees, trying to get inside the bar.”

Then, from the breezeway side of the sidewalk across California, Sylve said, Huber made a comment: “We have to make sure he’s dead.”

Meantime, the first of the bumbling began, per Sylve’s story. O’Neal was running back to the breezeway, Sylve behind him, but they “took sort of a wrong turn” because of a “recessed storefront.” Sylve says he fell down, “the gun slipped from my hands, trying to catch myself from falling down.” He picked it up and made it back to the getaway car, where he says Chaney was in the driver’s seat, with O’Neal and (other person) already there too. “We told Chaney it was time to leave.”

They intended to head to the West Seattle Bridge to get rid of the guns, he said, but kept getting lost.

Baird: “How many wrong turns?”

Sylve: “Every turn was wrong.” And he said they discussed “if we hit him or not.” O’Neal said he didn’t see blood. Sylve said he did.

He then said they had two close calls with police: “We were heading northbound when a police officer pulled alongside our vehicle … shone a spotlight (into it) … then drove ahead and took a left. We continued going straight, doing the speed limit.” Shortly thereafter, he said, another police car – or, maybe the same one – did the same thing, but he insisted neither tried to stop them or pull them over. After the second encounter, according to Sylve, “we got off the main street where police were likely to be,” headed back toward “the scene of the crime,” and had “a big argument about directions.” At that time, he said, they gave up the plan to throw the guns and shell casings over the bridge, and drove back to O’Neal’s residence in South King County: “We were just happy to be out of West Seattle.”

They weren’t there long, he said – but long enough for him and O’Neal to wash their hands to “get the gun powder off,” and to explain to Chaney and (other person) what had happened. Yet again, Sylve testified, O’Neal said he thought they had both missed.

He then got a ride to Sea-Tac Airport – where he was ticketed for a 6 am flight – from Chaney, who first dropped off (other person) to see his girlfriend. Sylve said he and Chaney then stopped at a bar: “We both said we needed a drink.” Chaney, he said, “was concerned that we didn’t do as we intended to do,” in terms of killing Bushaw.

Once at Sea-Tac after maybe half an hour at the bar, he said he tried to fall asleep, since he was too early to “check all the way in,” gave up after an hour and called Chaney at that point, thinking he had left his phone charger behind.

That concluded his morning testimony. Afternoon summary to come …

ADDED 7:11 AM: From Monday afternoon:

Sylve said he found out “some days later” that Bushaw had indeed died, “by looking it up on the Internet.” Not long afterward, he interviewed for a job in Texas, and was hired. The home-invasion-robbery victim came to visit him about four months after the shooting, he said, and “discussed small details of (it) with him.” They discussed it again, he said, in late September of 2009, when Sylve returned to the Northwest “to visit family” and asked (the home-invasion victim) to pick him up at the airport, because of a delay in getting a rental car.

On December 1st, 2009 – nine months after the murder – Sylve was arrested in San Antonio, and was questioned by Seattle Police Detective Cooper (who has been seated on prosecutor Baird’s side of the table in Judge Joan DuBuque’s courtroom throughout the case). He said he did not admit to the shooting, and did not implicate anyone else. Then in mid-January 2011, he acknowledged, he gave Detective Cooper another statement, in which his story changed.

At that point, just before 2 pm Monday, Baird ended his questioning of Sylve, and it was defense lawyers’ turn, starting with Chaney’s lawyer Jim Roe. While Baird had stood by the gallery end of the jury box during his questioning, Roe did most of his from the table. He established that Sylve’s charge was reduced in a plea bargain that included the expectation he would testify, and that he had not been charged with being a felon in possession of a gun.

Many of the ensuing questions involved the timeline for the shooting, what preceded it, what followed it, who was where, when were they there, etc. Roe: “And so there was no discussion about killing or hurting anyone until you got to O’Neal’s place after 9:30?” He then asked about a variety of cell phone calls made before and after that time, and about the group’s drinking and smoking, both at O’Neal’s residence and at a bar. Sylve said he had had four shots of brandy at a bar before they had gone to O’Neal’s to smoke marijuana, two “blunts.”

Asked by Roe why Sylve had supported the idea to shoot Bushaw, he replied, “The (home-invasion) break-in … there were women and children present … it just wasn’t right.”

Roe: “That deserved a killing?” He then showed Sylve a large poster-size map showing the 4700 block of California SW, asking him again who was where and when. Maintaining a tone that could be interpreted as somewhat incredulous, he quizzed Sylve, “There really wasn’t any planning prior to the shooting?” and also asked about Sylve’s claim they got lost while making their getaway. “Nobody had a map?” They weren’t familiar with West Seattle, Sylve replied, and said it wasn’t a matter of finding their way “back” to the West Seattle Bridge – “I think we went the back way in” when heading up from O’Neal’s apartment in Renton.

As for the actual shooting – Roe: “Why [did Sylve say] no head shots?”
Sylve: “We’d been drinking, we were high – the head’s a small target, we could miss.”
Roe: “…You pulled the trigger and you shot the guy, didn’t ya? What was going through your mind?”
Sylve: “Nothing good.”
Roe: “You didn’t even try to find out from him who did the beating [in the home-invasion robbery] … you had a plan to kill someone on behalf of a man you hadn’t talked to in 10 years because you were mad at him.” (That was explained when the other defense lawyer questioned him.) “…Why’d ya do it?”
Sylve: “Just … acting out. Mad about a bunch of things.”

Roe also drew out contradictions between Sylve’s current claim he hadn’t fired his gun before, and his claim to Detective Cooper that he had.

Just before 3:30 pm, Huber’s lawyer Tony Savage took over questioning Sylve. He asked first for personal details, during which all present heard that Sylve is 34, has been married 10 years, has three children – daughters 5 and 7, a 9-year-old son. He graduated from Yakima’s Eisenhower High School in 1997 and also (as he had said earlier) attended Highline Community College and UW. He had been working building homes on a golf course.

Savage also sought to bring out more about how everyone knew each other. Sylve said he had not met Huber or (the other person) before the day of the shooting, but he knew Chaney, O’Neal, and the home-invasion-robbery victim from Yakima – all had attended the same high school, though the home-invasion victim was the only one who had been in the same grade as Sylve, who said he had lived with that man’s family for part of their senior year in high school.

He and the home-invasion victim had gotten into trouble over thefts right after high school, it emerged while Savage was questioning Sylve; the witness blamed the other man for what resulted in Sylve being convicted of possession of stolen property, and the two didn’t speak again for a decade, until 2008.

Returning to the discussion of what preceded the Bushaw shooting, Savage asked Sylve why the home-invasion victim had asked him for a gun – allegedly the original reason Sylve had come to visit. Trying to clarify, Sylve replied that he had been asked by his old friend if he knew someplace he could get a gun, or someone he could get a gun from. When Sylve arrived and got into the home-invasion victim’s car at the South King County barbershop where Chaney worked, he said he handed over the gun he had brought, and that his old friend asked “are there any bodies on it” – meaning, had anyone been shot with it.

Savage was seeking to nail down the timeline when the subject of retribution/revenge for the home-invasion robbery came up, when it was time to end court for the day, at 4 pm. “All rise,” ordered the bailiff, as the jurors and judge exited through their respective doors at the back and front of the courtroom, followed by the officers putting Huber, Chaney, and Sylve back in handcuffs, and taking them out via the main courtroom door, and finally, the gallery and lawyers’ tables emptied.

Court resumes at 9 this morning; Sylve will be back on the stand, with Savage continuing his questioning.