OGDEN -- After watching an emotional video of a double-shooting and then hearing a 911 confession, a 2nd District Judge Friday ordered Jeffrey Jones to stand trial on two counts of attempted aggravated murder.
Judge Stanton Taylor said there was enough evidence to bind Jones over on the two first-degree felony counts, and he set trial for June 8. If convicted, the 31-year-old Ogden man could be sentenced to serve the rest of his life in prison.Jones is accused of walking into a 7-Eleven store on Harrison Boulevard and 32 Street on Jan. 6 about 8 p.m. and shooting two people numerous times with a shotgun. Customer Dan Nebeker, 31, Roy, was shot twice, and store clerk Karan Rice, 33, Ogden, was shot three times. They both recovered from their injuries, but neither testified at Jones' preliminary hearing.
Eric Orosco testified that he was the first person inside the convenience store after the shooting. "I saw someone laying on the floor and a pool of blood," he said. "A woman was screaming."
Orosco said he saw a shotgun on a counter and a man talking on a telephone in a small back room. He said he grabbed the shotgun, ran outside and put the shotgun on a gas pump. A woman drove up, and he asked her to call 911.
Prosecutor Sandra Sjogren played a videotape of the shooting taken from a camera inside the store. The tape shows a man walking into the store with a shotgun.
He points the gun to something off camera and shoots. He then goes off camera; a woman is heard screaming, and more shots are fired.
The video then shows Orosco coming inside the store, grabbing the shotgun and running outside while a woman is heard moaning and screaming for help.
Some spectators inside the courtroom were crying while the video was played.
Sjogren said that after the shooting, Jones went into the store's office and called 911. The prosecutor played a tape of the emergency call for the judge.
After a dispatcher answered the call, the caller said, "I killed somebody. I shot them with a shotgun."
The jumbled recording goes on to say that the man did not know why he shot anybody. The man continued to talk to the dispatcher until police arrived and placed Jones under arrest. Ogden police detective Dannielle Croyle said that she noticed Jones had a "flushed face and puffy eyes" when she talked to him.
The detective said Jones told her he had been drinking beer and whiskey earlier that day at his father's Ogden home. He said he left and went straight home, where he picked up his shotgun and shells, Croyle testified.
When asked why he shot two people, Croyle said Jones told her: "I just walked in there and shot them. . . . I don't know why."