Witness recalls shooting spree, trial continues

PALMER — As Spc. Richard Polly described taking cover behind a van and a bullet whizzing past his head, he sounded every bit a combat-tested soldier.

“That’s what I was worried about, he was going to flank us while we were pinned down,” Polly said. “If he was going to flank us I was going to flank the other way.”

But while Polly was under fire that night in April, he wasn’t in Iraq — where he once served — or Afghanistan — where he’s about to be deployed. He was in Wasilla, in the parking lot of Tailgater’s Bar and Grill.

Tuesday he testified in the trial of Duane Aylsworth, who is charged with attempted murder. Prosecutors say he fired six rounds at two Army National Guard soldiers that night. His brother, Donald Lee, initially confessed to being the shooter, but police and prosecutors say he was just trying to take the rap.

Polly said he first noticed Aylsworth earlier that night in the bar. He said Aylsworth was drunk and was hassling some of the female patrons.

Eventually Aylsworth turned his attention to a woman who was at the bar with Polly and Polly’s friend, Eduardo Prieto.

Prieto, during his turn on the stand, said Aylsworth had told the woman he was taking some matches she had sitting next to her. She said she wasn’t done using them yet. Prieto said Aylsworth replied that he was going to take the matches, “and then I’m going to take you home.”

That’s when Prieto stepped in. So did Lee and then Polly. Lee tried to calm the situation down and pull his brother away. Polly stepped in to back up Prieto.

“I said he had an option. Either leave or get his ass kicked,” Prieto said. “He said something along the lines of, ‘I don’t box. I take care of business another way.’”

Polly remembered that conversation as well. He said he asked Aylsworth, “What do you mean, like you kill people?” and then the conversation trailed off.

Prieto said that Aylsworth and Lee took the first option he gave them — they left. But they didn’t stay gone. He said he was still concerned about his female friend’s safety so he walked her to her car.

Outside, he said, he saw a gold Jeep drive by slow with Aylsworth in the passenger seat tying a bandana over his face. So, figuring there was about to be more trouble, he went back in to get Polly.

“He said, ‘Hey, let’s go outside, those guys are back. If something’s going to go down I don’t want it to go down in the bar,’” Polly recalled.

Polly said he went outside and saw a man in a black-and-white checked coat with the hood pulled up with a baseball cap on his head and a white bandana over his nose, mouth and chin pointing a gun he held sideways.

Aylsworth’s attorney, Jon-Marc Petersen, spent some time asking Polly why he believed that person was his client and poking holes in his recollection — pointing out that the detail about the baseball cap wasn’t included in Polly’s first statement to police.

“You couldn’t see who it was because he had the hood and the bandana?” Petersen asked.

Polly said that Aylsworth is skinnier and more fit than Lee and thus he couldn’t have gotten them mixed up. Plus, they were wearing different color jeans.

“I could tell who it was because of the build,” he said. “And the jean color.”

At any rate, Polly said, very soon after he walked out of the bar the masked man opened fire. He said Prieto shoved him down and he pushed Prieto around behind him. They both took cover behind a taxi-van in the parking lot. He said upon seeing the gun he sized it up as a revolver, bigger than a .22-caliber, which means the masked man had six shots.

So, ducking for cover, he kept a count going in his head while at the same time making sure the shooter didn’t come any closer. After the fifth shot he popped his head up to check where the shooter was and a sixth round went off, shattering the van window he was peering through and showering him with glass.

“I was like, ‘he’s out’ and we just got up,” and ran back into the bar, Polly said. The bartender locked the doors and the owner of the shot-up taxi van called the cops.

Asked if the shooter’s method was a proper way to handle a gun, Polly said it wasn’t.

“If he had just held the gun straight up and took a straight aim he would’ve taken one of us out,” he said.

Lee pleaded guilty prior to his brother’s trial to charges of eluding arrest and hindering prosecution. In return he received a one-year sentence. Aylsworth’s trial is set to continue next week.

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.