The man accused in the shooting of nine people in downtown Tucson last month was ordered jailed without bond Friday during his first appearance Friday in Pima County Superior Court.
David Leroy French, 21, was read his rights by Judge T. Clayton Kamm and told that he would be held without bond through at least his next court hearing. He was in court for a probation revocation hearing for a prior aggravated assault case and an arraignment on 29 criminal charges related to the shooting in July.
About a dozen family members and supporters of French sat together on one side of the courtroom. Two victims in the shooting sat on the other side.
David Hurn was struck with shrapnel during the shooting about 2 a.m. July 19 along East Congress Street. After the hearing, Hurn told the Star he was nervous for the initial appearance, but wanted to “see how it worked.”
People are also reading…
“I feel like it’s a little more closure too, just to be here,” he said.
Hurn, a 21-year-old microbiology transfer at the University of Arizona, was walking downtown that early morning with a group of friends when he says he heard “a lot of gunshots” and dropped his slice from Empire Pizza.
“I thought it was a car or something until my friends pulled me, and I felt my back hurt,” he said. “I felt the pain, but I didn’t think I actually got shot.”
He said his friends saw the shrapnel wound on his back and took him to police.
“I was just waiting for them to get to me because other people were more badly hurt,” he said. Hurn was in the hospital for a short amount of time, he said, and did not need stitches.
French, dressed in jail garb during Friday’s hearing, had been hospitalized as he recovered from being shot by a Tucson police officer immediately after the shooting.
French is scheduled for a bond hearing Tuesday, Aug. 11. French is also scheduled for a case management conference and petition to revoke probation hearing Sept. 17 and a pretrial hearing in the shooting case Oct. 19.
