Thirteen bullets rang out in a Billings trailer court last summer. Five of them hit a woman, her son and a family friend.
On Friday, a Yellowstone County jury convicted a Billings man of firing those rounds with the intention to kill. The wounded woman, Kimberley Bryant, drove herself, her then 16-year-old son and their friend to a hospital for life-saving treatment. All three survived the shooting.
“But that’s not for lack of trying on the defendant’s part,” Deputy Yellowstone County Attorney Sabrina Currie said in her closing argument to jurors Friday morning.
In total, Darrell Colton Bryant was found guilty of six felonies, including three counts of attempted deliberate homicide. Bryant’s trial came roughly eight months after he drew a handgun he was not legally permitted to have on two teenagers, chased them into Kimberly Bryant’s home and kept shooting until his magazine was empty.
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The jury deliberated for about two-and-a-half hours before submitting their verdict, bringing the five-day trial to an end.
Kim Bryant and her son, the now 17-year-old Denim, testified against Darrell Bryant, and were present in court when the guilty verdict was read. At the end of the hearing, they shared hugs with one another, and their friends and family who joined them in court.
Throughout the trial, jurors also heard testimony from detectives who investigated the shooting, hospital staff who treated the three survivors and Darrell Bryant.
On Aug. 16, police arrested Bryant in the wake of a shooting at Golden Meadows Mobile Home Park. Although multiple law enforcement agencies surrounded a mobile home during the hours after the shooting, launching flash grenades and tear gas into the residence under the suspicion that Bryant was barricaded inside, he was arrested at a campground near Columbus.
Darrell Bryant took the stand Thursday, and never denied shooting three people with a gun he wasn’t permitted to have. During his testimony, his recollections of the morning matched those of the survivors: In the early hours of Aug. 16, Darrell was walking alone in the trailer park when he was met by Denim and his 18-year-old friend. An argument over keys to an SUV escalated to a brief melee between Bryant and Denim’s friend. After being shoved to the ground, Bryant pulled a gun from his waistband and squeezed the trigger, firing what he described as warning shots.
The boys ran away, and Denim followed. Kim Bryant, woken up by the gunfire, testified that she let her son and his friend into the house, then braced herself against the door in an effort to keep Darrell from entering. Darrell kicked the door in, stepped inside and started shooting. He shot Denim, Kim and Denim’s 18-year-old friend. With all three on the ground, Bryant testified that he went to the bedroom to get more ammunition. When he returned to the living room, the three had left.
Bryant fired eight rounds inside the mobile home, turning the living room into “a shooting gallery,” prosecutor Currie said. Along with hitting three people, bullets went through walls and windows. Also inside the house that morning was a pregnant woman, who was not harmed by gunfire.
Seconds after being shot, Kim Bryant got her son and his friend into an SUV and sped to a local emergency room.
At Billings Clinic, Kim was treated for a gunshot wound to her leg. Denim had bullets come within centimeters of his radial and femoral arteries, a puncture to either of which could have been fatal. The 18-year-old was shot through his hand and had a bullet pass through his chest, causing one of his lungs to collapse. Bryant, still carrying the loaded handgun and two magazines, got a ride out of Billings from a friend. They made it to the Columbus campground, where he was arrested.
Attorneys Joseph Zavatsky and Sarah Kottke, who represented Bryant, argued that years of tension in Darrell Bryant’s relationship with Kim Bryant and her son erupted that morning. When questioned by Zavatsky, Bryant said he drew his gun and fired out of fear for his life. Roughly two years prior to pulling his gun on Denim and his friend, Bryant himself had been a victim in a shooting. And Denim was the shooter.
In July 2021, per court testimony, Bryant was fighting with the Denim's mother while they were living in a South Side home. Denim testified in court that he’d seen his mother’s face bloodied after fights with Bryant in the past. The fight ended with Denim getting a handgun from one of the house’s bedrooms and shooting Bryant once. Denim testified that he put the gun away, and cooperated with police who responded to the shooting.
The bullet went through Bryant’s arm and into his abdomen, Bryant said in court, piercing his lung, his liver and his intestines. The injury put him into a coma for two weeks, and for months after being shot he breathed, ate and used the bathroom through tubes.
“You are fully aware of the life-threatening destruction a single bullet can cause,” Currie asked Bryant.
“Correct,” he said.
Animosity between Darrell and Kim Bryant persisted into the summer of 2023. Bryant testified that he felt controlled, manipulated and threatened by Kim Bryant, the most common threat being that he would get shot again.
It was out of this fear, Bryant and his attorneys argued, that he had an acquaintance buy him a handgun from Scheels. As a registered violent offender, Bryant was forbidden by law from owning a gun. On the stand, he admitted to shaving off the gun’s serial number. The acquaintance reported the gun stolen days after buying it, according to court testimony.
“I thought that if I scratched the serial number off, that it would be like a ghost gun,” he said.
The term “ghost gun,” is most commonly given to privately made firearms, and they’re referred to as such because of their difficulty to track. The Billings Police Department, which investigated the case that resulted in charges against Bryant, seized a total of 265 firearms throughout 2023.
When questioned by prosecutors, Currie had Bryant go over each time he pulled the trigger that morning, asking him again and again what the imminent threat to his life was. Bryant’s defense in carrying the gun, and of the shooting, was that he felt threatened by the two teens after the argument culminated with one of the teens shoving him. When the two ran away, he said he was afraid they would return with their own guns. When he was inside the trailer home, he said he was afraid the three survivors might gang up on him.
“I shot because I was afraid I was going to get shot,” Bryant said.
Along with the three convictions for attempted murder, the jury found Bryant guilty two counts of criminal endangerment, one for the shooting outside the trailer home and another for putting the life of a pregnant woman in danger, along with one count of illegally possessing a firearm.
Yellowstone County detention officers led Bryant out of the courtroom in cuffs after the guilty verdict, and he will remain in custody until his sentencing. For each count of attempted deliberate homicide, Bryant faces up to life in prison.