The first day of witness testimony in the murder trial of Mark De Simone took jurors to the scene of the shooting death of Duilio Antonio “Tony” Rosales.
Seth Bradshaw, the closest thing to an eyewitness to the alleged shooting, was on the stand for about an hour and a half Monday to go over the incident in painstaking detail. Bradshaw testified that he was in a hunting party with De Simone, Rosales and others in May 2016, and that on May 15, he was with the two of them working on crab pots in the afternoon.
When they came back to shore, Bradshaw testified, Bradshaw went to add gas to a generator just northwest of a cabin and then was urinating behind the cabin.
He then heard two shots on the front side of the cabin, he said, and assumed they were just doing target practice. Bradshaw walked into the side door of the cabin and walked toward the front door, he testified under direct examination from Assistant District Attorney Amy Paige, and at the front door, Bradshaw passed De Simone.
Once they passed each other, Bradshaw said he saw Rosales, 34, on the front porch, facedown in a pool of blood. Bradshaw said he asked De Simone what happened.
“I shot him,” De Simone said, according to Bradshaw’s testimony. “It’s all my fault. I shot him.”
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Bradshaw added that De Simone’s demeanor didn’t appear to be very changed. De Simone didn’t have a gun at the time, Bradshaw said, and De Simone walked away calmly.
“Mark had walked off like nothing was wrong,” Bradshaw said. “He wasn’t concerned about him either. I knew something wasn’t right.”
During cross-examination, Assistant Public Defender Deborah Macaulay pointed out that there were a couple discrepancies between what Bradshaw said in court Monday and what he told authorities at the time. One was about what De Simone said to Bradshaw immediately after the shooting.
To Alaska State Trooper Ryan Anderson, according to Anderson’s report that Macaulay showed in court, Bradshaw said that De Simone said, “I fired the gun and it went off again,” at one point, along with admitting that he had shot Rosales.
Macaulay asked Bradshaw whether he heard any yelling or fighting from the front of the cabin. He said no, and said he would have probably heard it if there had been any fighting. Instead, the first thing he heard was the gun, he said, and assumed it was target practice or something harmless like that.
Bradshaw was the third of four witnesses to be placed under oath Monday. The first was Bill Young, the former owner of the Jewel Box — the jewelry store where Rosales worked — and the owner of the cabins at Excursion Inlet where the members of the hunting party were staying.
The second was Rosales’ widow Maria Gonzalez. Her testimony was short but intense, as she recounted dropping her husband off at the airport on Friday, May 13, 2016. She then said he called her Sunday during the day and the spoke for a moment.
“He told me that the weather was beautiful and he was in the boat,” Gonzalez said. “He was normal. Happy.”
At 2 a.m. the next morning, she said, she learned that Rosales was dead.
The final witness of the day, Seth’s younger brother Sam, provided some insight into what he perceived as mood changes with De Simone throughout the week.
He said De Simone seemed friendly and pleasant when they first arrived at Excursion Inlet. Around the time they learned Rosales was coming to join them, Sam said, De Simone’s demeanor changed.
“He just seemed a little more depressed,” Sam said of De Simone. “He just didn’t seem like the same guy we had met a couple days prior.”
Sam testified that he was hunting for bears a little more than 100 yards north of the cabin when he heard the two shots ring out. He then said he heard his brother Seth yelling to him to come back to the cabin a few minutes later.
On his way back to the cabin, Sam said, he ran into De Simone. He said he asked De Simone what was happening at the cabin.
“I was (screwing) around and I shot Tony,” De Simone told him, Sam recalled under direct examination.
Based on this statement, Sam said, he believed it to be an accident. He later told Young and his father Kevin that there had been a “shooting accident” when he went to tell them about it, both he and Young recalled Monday under direct examination.
Sam also added that De Simone seemed nervous soon after the shooting, saying, “(Bill Young’s) going to be upset with me.” Sam said he then tried to lift De Simone’s spirits a little bit by complimenting him on the breakfast he made that morning. There was an “instant” improvement in his mood, Sam recalled.
“It was kind of strange,” Sam said, “because all of a sudden had switched his mode and was almost happy to tell me about breakfast.”
During her opening statement this past Friday, Paige said this change in moods would be key to her case.
The court adjourned for the day at 2 p.m., just as Paige finished up with her questioning of Sam Bradshaw. The day Tuesday will start with Macaulay cross-examining Sam.
• Contact reporter Alex McCarthy at 523-2271 or amccarthy@juneauempire.com. Follow him on Twitter at @akmccarthy.
Mark De Simone watches during his trial in Juneau Superior Court on Monday, April 30, 2018. De Simone is accused of killing Duilio Antonio “Tony” Rosales during a hunting trip in Excursion Inlet in 2016. (Michael Penn | Juneau Empire)
