Jurors Given 2 Versions Of Bar Fight, Aftermath

After brawling with a man at a bar last year, Urbano Brito-Herrera either stalked and tried to kill the man or simply walked away after the possibly racially motivated fight.

That’s the two versions prosecutors and defense attorneys told a Kootenai County jury Monday at the start of Brito-Herrera’s trial on charges of first-degree attempted murder.

Brito-Herrera, 37, is accused of shooting Martin Nunez, 32, in the chest last spring as Nunez was inspecting a malfunctioning headlight on his van. The two had been asked to leave Beta’s Tavern on Sherman Avenue after a fistfight.

Nunez spent three months in a hospital after the bullet went in one side of his torso and out the other.

Police searched nearly six months for Brito-Herrera before he was arrested in Seattle last September.

Monday, Nunez told the court he had walked into the bar after midnight on April 4, 1995, and soon was exchanging blows with Brito-Herrera. The fight started in the bar and continued out the door while a crowd from the bar looked on.

Nunez said he and Brito-Herrera had known each other and had had “confrontations” before that night.

“There were no weapons,” said prosecutor Rick Baughman. “There were no knives, no guns. It was a fisticuffs fight.”

Onlookers told both men to leave, Nunez said. Nunez walked down the street and into the Lake City Saloon. A few minutes later he walked to his van to go home.

The van started, but the headlights weren’t working right, he said. When he got out to check them, he said, Brito-Herrera was standing 20 feet away with a gun.

Nunez heard three shots, felt pain and dove into his car. He then scrambled to a nearby house and had someone call the police.

“I have no doubt in my mind it was (Brito-Herrera),” Nunez said.

Defense attorney Joe Ryan said someone else must have done it.

Ryan suggested the fight was racially motivated. Brito-Herrera is black. Nunez is of unknown ethnicity and declined to be interviewed.

“Urbano is in the bar having a drink and playing darts when Nunez walks up to him, the only black man in that bar, and slugs him,” Ryan said during his opening statement.

After Nunez beat up his client someone else shot Nunez, then escaped on a motorcycle, Ryan said. He declined to elaborate until he was able to cross-examine Nunez.

The trial continues today.

, DataTimes