photo by: Nick Krug

D-Dubs Bar and Grill is located at 10 W. Ninth St. in Eudora.

Story updated 7:52 p.m. July 27, 2018:

The fatal shooting of Bo Hopson outside a Eudora bar was captured on security video from two angles — but barely.

The shooting occurs in the far corners of the frames, the footage is dark, and the figures are small and difficult to see or partially out of the frame.

More clearly pictured is the scene inside the bar before the shooting, when alleged gunman Danny W. Queen tumbles off his bar stool and is ushered out, and the post-shooting scene outside when bar-goers punch and kick Queen as he lies on the pavement.

Jurors watched four security video clips Friday morning during Queen’s murder trial in Douglas County District Court.

Queen, 37, of Eudora, is charged with first-degree murder for allegedly fatally shooting Hopson on June 24, 2017, at D-Dubs Bar and Grill, 10 W. Ninth St. in Eudora. Queen also is charged with two counts of attempted first-degree murder for allegedly pointing his gun at two other men and pulling the trigger, though the gun reportedly didn’t fire.

Queen’s trial started Monday and had been scheduled to conclude Friday, but will continue next week. Queen himself is among witnesses yet to testify, and is expected to say that he heard someone threaten him and pulled his gun in self-defense, his attorneys have said.

photo by: Mike Yoder

Defendant Danny Queen is pictured Tuesday, July 24, 2018, during his first-degree murder trial in Douglas County District Court. Queen is accused in a fatal shooting that took place in June 2017 outside a Eudora bar.

Queen has been without handcuffs or ankle shackles and has been wearing a collared shirt and slacks during his trial. However, he does remain in custody on $1 million bond.

Earlier this week, jurors heard testimony from multiple eyewitnesses to the incident, all of whom are in the videos from the bar that night.

They said Queen was asked to leave the bar after making vulgar comments to women inside, tussled with patrons outside, and was then led to and laid down on a flatbed trailer in front of the building.

Witnesses said Hopson, who was working security at the bar that night, was watching Queen and had offered to find him a ride home when Queen suddenly pulled a gun from his pocket and started shooting. Queen was arrested at the scene, and Hopson was flown to a hospital where he died the next day.

The bar security videos were played in court during testimony by the lead investigator on the case, Eudora Police Department Detective Daniel Flick.

There’s no sound, but here’s what they show:

Shortly after 12:45 a.m., Queen walks up to the bar inside, wearing a ball cap, a gray “ARMY” T-shirt with cut-off sleeves and blue jeans. At 6-foot-5 according to jail records, Queen towers over most others there.

He speaks to several people and appears to make a lewd gesture, pointing his hands toward his groin, before taking a seat on one of the tall chairs at the bar.

A patron approaches Queen and appears to confront him but not aggressively, placing his arm across Queen’s shoulders as he speaks to him. Hopson approaches and stands nearby but doesn’t get involved.

Possibly as he is attempting to stand up from his bar stool, Queen falls over backwards, tumbles onto his back on the floor, rolling backward with both legs in the air.

Several patrons help him up, then the man who was talking to him earlier escorts him out.

Outside, a group of patrons gathers around Queen as he leaves the deck. It appears there is a fight involving Queen and several of them, but it’s difficult to see in the video who is doing what.

Queen then ends up at the trailer in the parking lot, nearly out of view of the security cameras. Hopson is seen leaving the deck and heading to that area, too.

Flick testified that the shooting occurs next in the video, at 1:08 a.m. However, the shooting is difficult to see in either video angle.

A moment after Hopson is shot (according to Flick), the two alleged attempted murder victims, Clark Orth and Dustin Crowe, can be seen near the trailer. Orth runs away from Queen and dives under the opposite side of the trailer. Crowe runs toward Orth with Queen following behind him at one point.

With no one touching him, Queen then appears to stumble and fall backward onto the parking lot.

Crowe has testified that he tackled Queen, though the video shows Queen on the ground before Crowe and his brother Tyler Crowe — who also runs toward Queen at this point — reach him.

The brothers both start pummeling Queen on the ground, and over the course of the next few minutes, multiple other men join in.

Tyler Crowe emerges from the dogpile with Queen’s gun in his hand, then holds the gun high over his head.

At one point, a pickup truck pulls up next to the melee and stops in the street. A man — who Flick said was at the bar earlier — jumps out of the driver’s seat, runs to Queen, punches him maybe six times, then backs off. Shortly afterward, the man jumps back in his pickup and drives away.

Others remain milling around the scene, though no longer hitting Queen, who’s now motionless on the pavement.

Police arrived shortly after that, and Flick got there to investigate the crime scene at about 1:50 a.m., he testified.

In questioning Flick about his interviews with bar-goers, prosecutor Amy McGowan suggested a possible explanation for witness accounts differing from the video on some points.

“Because of this situation, being in a bar, did you find that some of the people you interviewed, their memories differed a little bit from what you’re seeing on the video?”

“Yes,” Flick said.

Witnesses included “a number of people that had been drinking or were intoxicated?” McGowan said.

“Yes,” Flick said.

That included the Crowe brothers, who have both previously testified that they were intoxicated.

Flick said that when he arrived, he was able to identify Queen easily.

“I went to Great Bend High School with Mr. Queen,” Flick said.

Flick said Queen was then taken to the police station to be interviewed, and he continued processing the crime scene.

Alleged murder weapon handled in court

Among Friday afternoon’s witnesses was the Kansas Bureau of Investigation forensic scientist who tested Queen’s gun after police retrieved it from the scene.

Upon request of attorneys, Mackenzie Argo dry-fired the gun in the courtroom — “Point it toward the ground,” Judge Peggy Kittel instructed in approving this demonstration — so jurors could hear what it sounded like when the trigger was pulled but no bullet emitted.

As witnesses said they heard at D-Dubs after Hopson was shot, the gun made a “clicking” sound with each trigger-pull. Argo also approached the jurors to show them up-close how the gun’s exterior safety switch worked.

Earlier in the afternoon, Flick held the gun and demonstrated to the jury its laser sight, switching on the red beam and shining it at the courtroom floor and wall.

Flick said police recovered two shell casings on the ground near Hopson and the trailer, and Argo said her testing confirmed those came from Queen’s gun, a Smith and Wesson Bodyguard .380 caliber semi-automatic pistol.

Argo said the gun worked properly when she test-fired it in her lab.

“When I received this firearm, it did fire how it was intended to,” she said. “I did not have any trouble with that.”

Argo said she couldn’t say whether the gun malfunctioned that night at D-Dubs. But she said there are numerous factors that could cause that, including a bad or old bullet or the safety being inadvertently switched on.

‘I’ve never seen him this drunk’

A woman who described herself as Queen’s “best friend” was among the first witnesses called by his defense team.

Nicole Bostwick of Overland Park said she’d worked with Queen at General Dynamics Information Technology since 2014.

The night of the shooting was Queen’s birthday, and Bostwick said she and her wife joined him and another co-worker for drinks and appetizers late that afternoon at a Lawrence bar and grill.

There, Queen had multiple shots of whiskey and at least three “big beers,” Bostwick said. Later, the group reconvened at Queen’s house in Eudora, where Bostwick saw him drink three-fourths of a bottle of whiskey — though she suspects he had more before and after she was there — plus more beer.

Queen was “really happy” and in a great mood, Bostwick said. But he was also really drunk.

“He was really intoxicated, his words were slurring,” she said. “I’ve never seen him this drunk.”

The group walked to Eudora’s CPA Picnic for a while, then back to Queen’s house. When they parted for the night, Bostwick said Queen told her he was going back to the picnic. She said they briefly discussed D-Dubs.

“I said stay the (expletive) away from that (expletive) bar,” Bostwick said. “He said, ‘I’m not going to that bar, I hate that (expletive) bar.'”