A former Lonoke County reserve deputy who is charged in the Thursday shooting death of his wife shot her before shooting himself, but told an Arkansas State Police detective she had shot him, according to a police affidavit released Monday.
Charlie Bryant’s statement to police didn’t hold up after detectives reviewed home digital surveillance video that caught the shootings, which left 34-year-old Elizabeth Sharae Bryant, a mother of four, dead and her 38-year old husband shot in the left side.
Bryant is facing a capital-murder charge. At an initial court appearance Friday, Lonoke County Judge Sandy Huckabee ordered him held without bail. Prosecuting Attorney Chuck Graham cited the circumstances of the crime, more than anything else, in asking for no bail.
He also said that he considered Bryant a flight risk and at risk to harm himself. Bryant’s plea and arraignment is set for Jan. 21, Graham said.
The shootings occurred about 8:30 a.m. outside the two-story home the couple shared in the Lonoke County community of Austin.
Emergency personnel and law enforcement officers responded to the residence to discover Charlie Bryant wounded and his wife dead.
Charlie Bryant, in a statement to Lt. Stacie Rhodes of the state police at a hospital, where he was treated and released, said he and his wife had argued Thursday morning.
After taking two of his three sons to school, he returned home to find that his wife had placed their infant daughter in one of their vehicles. At some point, according to Charlie Bryant’s statement, she took a 9mm semiautomatic pistol from a nightstand drawer and went outside.
Charlie Bryant told Rhodes that he armed himself with a .380-caliber semiautomatic pistol and followed his wife outside. He said that when he approached his wife, she shot him once “at which time he returned fire, shooting her one time in the head,” according to the affidavit.
But a search warrant by state police special agents for the Bryants’ home turned up the digital surveillance video that contradicted Charlie Bryant’s account of the shooting, the affidavit states.
The digital camera recorded Sharae Bryant placing the infant in a car seat in a white Ford Expedition before returning into the home.
About the same time, the video shows Charlie Bryant come out of the home and retrieve something from his red Dodge pickup and return to the home.
“The electronic surveillance then showed [Sharae Bryant] run from the house with [her husband] chasing her,” special agent Kevin Webb wrote in the two-page affidavit.
The video shows Charlie Bryant chase his wife once around the Expedition.
“When [Sharae Bryant] reached the driver’s door, [Charlie Bryant] approached [his wife] and the surveillance recording showed him stand over her and shoot [Sharae Bryant] in the head,” according to the affidavit.
Charlie Bryant “backed away a few feet, then approached his wife’s body, picked up something and walked about 10 feet from his wife, the affidavit states.
“The surveillance recording then showed [Charlie Bryant] shoot himself in the center area of his body,” Webb wrote. Charlie Bryant “fell to the ground … and crawled back to the body of [Sharae Bryant] and it appears that he placed something by her body.”
Charlie Bryant then “crawled back to the area that he shot himself and laid down,” the affidavit states.
Arkansas, Pages 10 on 12/24/2013