(Editor’s note: The video in this story is graphic and violent. Viewer discretion is recommended.)
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — If a picture paints a thousand words, video may capture even more. In this deadly shooting, even video paints two different versions of what happened according to two eye witnesses standing at the scene.
Surveillance captured the moment Anthony Bruno ran into off-duty officer, Donald Hubbard, who was working security on the night in question.
“I saw what appeared to be a police officer, a man in uniform struggling with a man in a suit and that’s really all I knew at the time,” witness Jason Reinhard said.
Reinhard pulled out his cell phone to record the altercation. Standing next to him, trauma nurse Ashley Janzen. Video shows the officer trying to detain Bruno, who appears to resist and quickly gets the upper hand. Blows are thrown and according to court documents, the officer feared for his life.
“Two gunshots to a chest and an abdomen, I’m pretty sure you’re going to lose a lot of blood,” Janzen said.
After the shots are fired, Janzen, a trained critical care nurse, said she ran to Bruno who was slumped and bleeding the ground.
“I think he started to say something,” Janzen recalled.
According to the case file Bruno said, “Don’t let me die.” Janzen said it was too late.
“And I remember seeing the wounds and there was a lot of blood coming from the one from his chest, and so I just simply asked the officer to come over and I just needed somebody to hold pressure on it while I did compressions,” Janzen said.
Janzen didn’t find out Bruno died until the next day, but says she still questions her role that night.
“I wanted to go over there and just, stop this. I wondered for a long time if I could have done anything to prevent the outcome, but I can’t,” Janzen said.
Reinhard said he’s watched the video several times now. Once with the Bruno family, and he said he reached the same conclusion they reached.
“Their reaction was actually relief because they felt that their son had been portrayed as the aggressor in the situation, and they had been put in a negative light, and they had felt all along that that couldn’t have been the case,” Reinhard said.
But Janzen said fighting an officer isn’t an option.
“So once he started, you know, being violent against the officer, that’s the wrong decision to make,” Ashley Janzen said.
And a Jackson County grand jury agreed. Last week, after being presented the case and video, jurors chose not to indict Officer Hubbard. The jurors agreed his use of deadly force was justified.
