They were on a paddleboard vacation in Key West. Then they saw the gushing blood

Scott McBride and his girlfriend Mandy just arrived in Key West for a paddleboard vacation with friends from Daytona Beach late at night March 20, 2016.

They were staying on a friend’s boat and Scott convinced Mandy to go with him to The Porch, a bar on Duval Street, where he had a Manhattan. Mandy ordered a martini.

After the drink, it was now after midnight, and the couple spotted Irish Kevin’s bar and wanted to snap a photo of themselves in front of it. They wanted to send it to friends back home to “make them jealous,” McBride said Friday.

As they walked to the over side of Duval, McBride felt something hit his leg. “Maybe someone had thrown a bottle or something,” he said.

As he looked down at his right leg and noticed what at first was a trickle of blood, he heard two loud bangs.

“It sounded like firecrackers to me,” McBride said. “I heard gunshots before, but I didn’t put it together in my mind.”

Mandy immediately grabbed McBride and pulled him inside Irish Kevin’s. Once they realized he’d been shot, staff placed bar rags on the wound, now gushing blood. A patron who was a paramedic used his belt to apply a tourniquet.

McBride was one of two gunshot victims to testify Friday at the Plantation Key courthouse for the prosecution in a felony case against Derek David, 35, then a Sugarloaf Key resident.

After a night of dinner and drinking, David was struggling to get his intoxicated wife Jodie to their car when the couple began physically fighting along Charles Street. Security camera footage showed him pushing Jodie down several times, before a man who was never identified ran up behind David and punched him.

After the brief fight, David pulled out his Ruger .380 and fired it down Charles Street, which leads to Duval. Bullets struck McBride, along with Reid Ogden, a filmmaker from Nokomis, Florida, in Key West for a fishing documentary, and Brendan Boudreau, a tourist from Louisiana.

David was charged with three counts of attempted second-degree murder. He tried and failed to have the case dismissed last year citing Florida’s Stand Your Ground law, allowing deadly force if one’s life or someone else’s life is perceived to be in imminent danger.

Defense attorneys Donald Barrett and Dustin Hunter argue David felt threatened by two unidentified men who hit him, referenced only as “Fedora Hat Man” and “Basketball Jersey Man.”

The defendant also reportedly felt threatened by Boudreau and his friend Trent Pauls, who were near the scene. But Pauls and Boudreau were not with unidentified men, and never touched David. They heard the commotion between Derek and Jodie David while having a smoke outside of Irish Kevin’s and walked down Charles Street out of concern for Jodie, Pauls testified Friday.

“He was shoving her to the ground, and I could see him hitting her,” Pauls told jurors and Assistant State Attorney Colleen Dunne.

But before Pauls and Boudreau got to the couple, Fedora Hat Man began hitting David. Pauls said he and Boudreau started walking back toward Duval once the fight broke out, but Jodie then started attacking him. She’s shown on security camera footage punching Pauls and tugging at his shirt as he and Boudreau are walking.

As Jodie spun him around by the shirt at one point, Pauls saw Derek David walk from Telegraph Road, off Charles Street on the opposite side of Duval, and pull out his Ruger. Pauls ran.

“You see that he has a gun pointed at you, and it kind of clicks, and I started running away,” Pauls said. While running, Pauls “heard the first gun shot, and the others after it.”

“It’s kind of surreal,” he said. “It’s one of those moments you never thought you’d have to live through. It’s stressful to think about right now.”

When he reached Duval, Pauls did not immediately know where Boudreau was. He was going to get his other friends and search for him, then he saw Boudreau, lying on his back inside a souvenir shop. He had been shot in the right leg.

“There was a lot of blood,” Pauls said. Boudreau is expected to testify Monday.

Reid Ogden, 28, was relaxing March 20 after wrapping filming for a documentary on a fly fishermen from Geiger Key. Ogden was having lunch with the guide at Salute! on the Beach on the south side of the island, where he met a woman who remains his girlfriend today, Malia Dell. He was excited when she agreed to go out with him for drinks later that night.

The two visited Rum Runners and Captain Tony’s before deciding to call it a night. They were walking along Duval toward Greene Street, where he parked his truck. Ogden noticed flashing lights reflecting off buildings. Like McBride, Ogden thought someone was setting off firecrackers. As he looked down Charles Street, he saw people running in his direction.

He felt a powerful blow on his left forearm. “I was struck by a bullet,” he said.

Describing the moment to Dunne, Ogden cried a bit.

Dell guided Ogden as the two fled down Duval. “We ran until we could find the next available shelter, establishment, anywhere we could get away,” he said.

They ended up at Teasers, a two-story strip club on Duval. They went upstairs and Dell led him to a balcony where he lay down. Bar staff used washclothes as tourniquets until paramedics arrived.

Ogden’s shirt was soaked in blood. The bullet from David’s gun went through his forearm and into his abdomen. He and Boudreau were flown by helicopter ambulance to Ryder Trauma in Miami. McBride was treated and released from Lower Keys Medical Center.

This story was originally published February 25, 2018 at 8:56 AM with the headline "They were on a paddleboard vacation in Key West. Then they saw the gushing blood."