Shooting victim’s ex-girlfriend takes stand in homicide trial

The ex-girlfriend of the victim in last year’s deadly shooting in a Whitefish extended-stay motel told jurors Wednesday that she was afraid of him in the moments before his death. 

“I knew how irate and abusive he could get,” testified Patricia Hawkins, the first witness called by defense attorney Amanda Gordon in Steven Justin Hedrick’s deliberate homicide trial in Flathead County District Court. 

Prosecutors alleged that Hedrick, 33, committed felony assault with a weapon when he intervened — armed with a handgun — in a disturbance involving Hawkins and her ex-boyfriend, Jeffery Brookshire, in the Local Monthly Lodgings in the early morning hours of Jan. 24, 2023. Brookshire’s subsequent death after the gun went off in his face left Hedrick culpable of deliberate homicide, Flathead County Attorney Travis Ahner argued in his opening statement Tuesday. 

“You can't bring a gun to a fistfight,” he said. “And even more so you can’t bring a gun to a verbal argument.”

Gordon, who opted to delay her opening statement, told jurors Wednesday that Hedrick acted in self-defense when he brought a gun with him while intervening in what witnesses have described as a drunken disturbance across the hall from his apartment. Montana law, she argued, allows individuals to draw a weapon to meet a threat. 

“I want you to think about whether [Hedrick] wanted to attend a fight at all or whether that altercation brought itself to his door,” Gordon said in a callback to Ahner’s opening. 

In the moments before Brookshire’s death, he had parked himself in front of Hawkins’ apartment, settling on the floor and kicking at her door, according to court documents and witness testimony. Although neighbors convinced him to leave, he returned after texting and phoning Hawkins, this time leaning against the door and knocking. 

Surveillance footage taken of the shooting, shown to the jury several times during the trial, captures Hedrick opening his door from across the way. An arm extends out of the doorway, a gun at the end of it. Brookshire is shown lurching forward and wrapping his hands around the Ruger Blackhawk Hunter before his head snaps back and he collapses to the floor. 

“... This was an incredibly rare case where we can show you what happened,” Gordon told jurors. “We were actually able to show you what happened between those two men in the Locals motel a year ago.”

The question at the heart of the case is whether Hedrick was justified in pulling a weapon on Brookshire. Detective Hunter Boll of the Whitefish Police Department, testifying about his investigation for the prosecution, noted that Hedrick could be seen on the surveillance footage double-checking that the gun was cocked before it went off. 

He also testified that Hedrick never described himself as afraid of Brookshire, though Gordon in her cross-examination tried to draw the distinction that a threat need not spark fear. 

Where Gordon sought to elicit descriptions of Brookshire’s demeanor and behavior during the series of confrontations that night from witnesses, Ahner focused on what Hedrick would have known about Brookshire as he grabbed his gun and opened his door. 

Hedrick, Ahner drew from witnesses, was unaware of the death threat Brookshire allegedly made over the phone to Hawkins that night. Brookshire had even come to Hedrick’s aid in a previous fight with another tenant, marking one of their few interactions, according to witness testimony. 

As to Brookshire’s demeanor and actions, witnesses like neighbor Karen Peters recounted him lurching at another tenant who had asked him to quiet down, running her off. He created a tense atmosphere in the building that night, she said. 

Hawkins remembered Brookshire taking a swing at her, haymaker style, from the floor when she came out of the apartment and told him to go home before someone called the police. After that, she locked the door and the window to her apartment. 

Prior to Brookshire’s death, she heard him arguing with Hedrick outside of her door, Hawkins testified. 

“I heard [Brookshire] saying, ‘I helped you and this is what you’re doing to me?’” Hawkins recalled under questioning from Gordon.

Ahner seized on that point during his cross-examination.

“You didn’t hear [Brookshire] threaten Mr. Hedrick at all?” he asked. 

“No,” Hawkins replied. 

News Editor Derrick Perkins can be reached at 758-4430 or dperkins@dailyinterlake.com.