Recurring nightmares — witnesses still live with the horror

"9-1-1 What is your emer—"

"I'm at Chevys Fresh Mex and someone just came in and shot our manager!"

Bartender Christy Bond tries to keep her wits about her. On a cell phone behind the bar, she gives the restaurant's address, tells dispatchers what she knows and what she'd witnessed.

"I saw him pull out a gun and shoot our manager. Get them here right away!"

Bond, then 24, describes her manager, Jason Rasmussen, who is lying, still, a few feet away on the ground.

"He has dark brown hair —" She interrupts herself and pauses, listening: " . . . He just shot someone outside." Her voice is trembling. " . . . Is an ambulance coming right now?"

The dispatcher is more concerned about the gunshot victim's wounds and tells the single mom how to stop the bleeding. Get some clean towels, the dispatcher says. "Press down firmly and don't let up."

Bond stares at her friend. She's crying, trying to do what she's being told through the telephone. Rasmussen was a manager who made it fun to come to work. It's rare. Some restaurant people can be a drag to work with. He is slipping away.

Bond had been making drinks at the Chevys Fresh Mex restaurant in the east-side Fort Union neighborhood when she saw a man yelling at the front. What the hell's going on? she wondered. It's Thursday night.

Then more yelling, then the shots, and the man who'd been yelling at the the front desk was gone and Rasmussen was on the floor. In moments she hovers over Rasmussen. Her voice weakens as she talks to the police dispatcher and she loses her composure. It seems to her she is on the phone with dispatchers forever and still no one comes to help. In reality, she is on the phone for less than three minutes. She sees her friend is fading.

" . . . He's not breathing. . . .

"Oh God. There's a guy down outside." Bond sees a middle-aged man with the gunman out the Chevys front door, then turns her attention back to Rasmussen. "He's not coming back . . .."

Far-away sirens interrupt the 9-1-1 recording.

---

Behind the wheel of his police cruiser, 25-year-old Sandy police officer Brandon Colton drives as fast as he ever has. His siren screams and his police radio spits out details about shots fired at the restaurant.

On 700 East, as he races toward Chevys, his speedometer reads 120 miles per hour, but Colton feels as if he's in slow-motion.

One block from Chevys, dispatchers report the gunman is still shooting in the parking lot, and this kicks the new officer out of his reverie. He gets ready. Later he will say that at that moment he is prepared to shoot somebody; that he is prepared for a gun battle in the parking lot.

But there is no shooter in sight when Colton slides to a stop at 7475 S. Union Park Ave. just behind his sergeant.