photo by: Sara Shepherd

Danny W. Queen, right, consults with his attorneys Joshua Seiden, left, and Dakota Loomis, center, during his trial on Monday, July 30, 2018, in Douglas County District Court. Judge Peggy Kittel is in the background. Queen was charged with murder in the death of Bo Hopson on June 24, 2017, at a Eudora bar.

A former Army convoy driver who served in Iraq, Danny W. Queen said he went into a Eudora bar the night of June 23, 2017, in a state of mind that was normal for him in unfamiliar situations: vigilant.

When Queen later got kicked out of that bar — where he didn’t know anyone but everyone else knew each other — he’d been drinking heavily, got roughed up as he was leaving and then blacked out, he said. He said that, when he came to, he was foggy, wobbly and heard a nearby man say, “I want to stomp on this guy’s head.”

Queen’s vigilance then turned to stopping a threat, he testified Monday during his own murder trial in Douglas County District Court.

“I was afraid. I thought that I was going to get attacked again, and possibly killed,” Queen said.

“After I had visualized getting my head stomped on, I immediately realized that that’s a serious threat. I started to sit up, and then, in a fluent motion, I’m pulling my pistol out of my pocket, and at the same time, there’s a guy in a white bandanna coming toward me … I aim it in his general direction, and I fire my first shot.”

Queen’s trial began July 23, and testimony concluded Monday, with Queen himself on the witness stand for four hours. Attorneys plan to present closing arguments this morning before handing the case over to the jury.

The man with the white bandanna on his head was 32-year-old Bo Hopson, of Eudora, who sustained one gunshot wound to his chest and one to his arm, and died at the hospital a day later. The shooting happened shortly after 1 a.m. June 24, 2017, at D-Dubs Bar and Grill, 10 W. Ninth St. in Eudora.

photo by: Contributed photo

Bo M. Hopson

Queen, 37, of Eudora, is charged with first-degree murder in Hopson’s death, as well as two counts of attempted murder for pointing his gun and pulling the trigger at two other men, though, according to testimony, the gun misfired.

The trial has been vivid, with numerous eyewitnesses describing a night at the small-town bar that devolved from verbal confrontation to a physical brawl to gunfire in the parking lot.

On Monday, Queen was asked to demonstrate in court the offensive gesture that, in part, sparked the argument with a woman inside the bar. He did, standing up and pointing both hands to his groin.

Prosecutor Amy McGowan copied the gesture, too, to punctuate her questions during cross-examination of Queen. McGowan also asked Queen whether he called the woman a vulgar term, and he said he didn’t, but acknowledged calling the woman a somewhat less vulgar term, all stated aloud in court.

According to Queen’s testimony:

June 23 was his birthday, and after a typical day of work at General Dynamics Information Technology, he went out with friends, first, to a Lawrence bar and grill, and then, to Eudora’s CPA picnic. He was drinking beers and shots of whiskey throughout the night.

After parting ways with his friends around 11 p.m., Queen went alone to D-Dubs, a five-minute walk from his house.

He had a small semi-automatic pistol in his right front pocket, which he’d purchased in 2014 from a federally licensed dealer in Eudora and which he carried everywhere except for places concealed carry was prohibited.

Under questioning by defense attorney Dakota Loomis, Queen — who is 6-foot-5 and, at the time, weighed 270 pounds — said he made conversation with several people he didn’t know, including telling one of the larger patrons outside that he was his “biggest threat,” meant as a compliment. That man responded with, “I’m a lover, not a fighter,” and everything was cordial, Queen said.

Queen said that’s normal for him in unfamiliar situations. He said he learned “vigilance training” while driving in Army convoys, looking for anything out of place and identifying threats, and still does it everywhere he goes.

“Especially in this situation, going into a bar by myself, one that I don’t know who anybody is, anybody could potentially just go off, fly off the handle,” Queen said. “I don’t know who’s going to be there to help out who.”

The argument in the bar started just after 12:45 a.m. Queen said he’d been waiting to get a drink, wasn’t acknowledged and his frustration built. He “snapped” at a woman who’d been chatting with the female bartender.

The bartenders told him he was cut off. After helping Queen off the floor when he fell out of his chair, some male patrons ushered him out. Video shows Hopson standing nearby at one point, but Queen said he never saw Hopson inside or heard him say, “Come on, buddy, you’ve got to leave,” as others testified.

On his way out, Queen said he was trying to make amends when John Elmer, husband of the woman he’d offended, “sucker punched” him and the two men took it to the parking lot. Queen said he swung and missed Elmer and the two wrestled on the ground.

Queen said he was then thrown to the ground, punched, kicked and pinned by multiple men.

“I was struggling to get up, I was struggling to defend myself,” he said. “I’m being attacked.”

Queen said he “blacked out” and came to while being lifted onto the trailer, where he was “thrown down” and punched in the abdomen.

“My head’s foggy, my face and my head are both throbbing, at that point, I can taste blood, I don’t know if it’s coming from my nose or my mouth,” Queen said. “I’m drunk and disoriented. I don’t know what’s going on at that point.”

He added, “Emotionally, I’m scared, frightened, because, again, I don’t know who’s around me, what’s going to happen next.”

photo by: Sara Shepherd

Defense attorney Dakota Loomis questions his client Danny W. Queen during Queen’s murder trial on Monday, July 30, 2018, in Douglas County District Court. Queen is charged with fatally shooting Bo Hopson on June 24, 2017, at a Eudora bar.

Queen said he got out his phone and tried unsuccessfully to find the nonemergency number to call police. That’s when, he said, he heard the man in the white bandanna who’d been talking to another man a few feet away threaten to “stomp” his head.

Queen said he wasn’t sure whether his first shot hit, so he fired a second shot and was attempting a third when his gun jammed.

“The gentleman wearing the white bandanna is starting to turn away and fall backward,” Queen said. “At that point, I no longer considered him a threat, because he was immobilized.”

Queen said he then turned his attention to the two other men and, not knowing whether they had weapons or what their intentions were, fired. Even after realizing his gun was jammed, he kept pulling the trigger.

“It was just a reaction,” Queen said.

Queen said he then stumbled and fell and was piled on by multiple men, “pummeled with punches” and knocked unconscious. The next thing he remembered was being facedown on the pavement getting handcuffed.

Although it’s not clear which injuries came before and which came after the shooting, postarrest photos displayed in court showed Queen with a bloodied face, one eye nearly swollen shut and lacerations to his back. He said he had a broken nose.

Queen’s attorney questioned him extensively about the other guns he had at his house: 14 long guns and five pistols, including an assault-style rifle and several larger, higher-capacity handguns.

Loomis said the point of that questioning was to show that, had Queen planned to kill, he could have accessed numerous other weapons within a short walking distance of the bar.

In her cross-examination of Queen, McGowan emphasized that Queen, as the defendant in the case, was able to review all the evidence and hear everyone else’s testimony before taking the stand.

She questioned Queen about pieces of his story that didn’t match others’ testimony — for one, no one else testified hearing Hopson threaten Queen. McGowan also emphasized a number of things Queen could have done instead of what he did: just leave the bar, call 911 instead of fumbling for a nonemergency number, brandish his gun at Hopson to scare him instead of shooting.

Queen refuted McGowan’s questions that suggested he was shooting “to kill.”

“I shot to stop the threat,” Queen said.

photo by: Sara Shepherd

Prosecutor Amy McGowan questions defendant Danny W. Queen during Queen’s murder trial on Monday, July 30, 2018, in Douglas County District Court. Queen is charged with fatally shooting Bo Hopson on June 23, 2017, at a Eudora bar. Also pictured are defense attorney Dakota Loomis, left, and prosecutor Bryant Barton, right.