MUSTANG, Okla. -- Investigators looking into the shooting death of Nichols Hills Fire Chief Keith Bryan have little to go on and are hoping for a break that will lead them to his killer, authorities said Thursday.
Jessica Brown, spokeswoman for the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation, said investigators are talking to as many people as they can, hoping someone will have the key piece of information that could lead them in the right direction.
"We're doing forensic testing on items," Brown said. "One of the things our agents did today was go back and canvass the neighborhood again, ask people if they saw or heard anything."
The state medical examiner ruled Thursday that Bryan died from a single gunshot to the head. Mustang police on Thursday released recordings of two 911 calls Keith Bryan's wife, Becky, made Tuesday night after he was shot at their home in the 1300 block of W Rose Hill Drive.
In the final seconds of her second call to 911, Becky Bryan describes her husband as "gasping for air."
"He's dripping, he's like moving," Becky Bryan said on the call, placed about 10:05 p.m. "I've got to have somebody here."
Her voice is heard during the first 17 seconds of the first call, placed from her cellphone, until the call apparently goes dead. Bryan first asks if she's reached Mustang police, then begins to describe "a young man about 25" until her voice drops off the call.
Bryan called back from a landline on a call that lasted 1 minute and 20 seconds. She describes a man about 25 or 26 years old wearing a hooded sweatshirt who walked in through the garage door of their home.
"He shot my husband in the head. My husband is laying here bleeding on my couch right now," Bryan said on the call. "And he (the shooter) turned around to me and he said, 'Ma'am, I'm so sorry,' he said, 'But your husband should have hired me.'"
Bryan's voice rises and she sounds increasingly desperate and upset as the call goes on.
"Oh my God. He's in a little itty bitty pickup, OK? He's going down my street," said Bryan, who continued to say it was a dark-colored pickup driving west.
The call ends soon thereafter when she says she has to go, as her husband gasped for air.
Keith Bryan, 52, died about 6 a.m. Wednesday at OU Medical Center in Oklahoma City.
Mustang police and the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation have not offered a description of the shooter more detailed than the one Becky Bryan gave on the 911 call. No suspects have been named, and no one has been arrested.
Mustang police have deferred comment to the OSBI on the case.
Brown and Mustang Police Chief Chuck Foley have said Becky Bryan is the only witness to the incident and investigators have spoken with her as they try to develop leads.
Officials have said it's possible the shooter was a disgruntled, unsuccessful job applicant.
The Nichols Hills Fire Department has not hired or interviewed anyone since 2007. The much larger Oklahoma City Fire Department hires frequently, and its chief, Keith Bryant, has a name similar to Keith Bryan's.
Oklahoma City fire officials heightened headquarters security in the wake of the shooting, though at the time Bryant was in Washington, D.C., for a conference.
Becky Bryan filed for divorce from her husband in January 2010. The divorce is still pending.
Efforts to reach Becky Bryan have been unsuccessful.
McClatchy-Tribune News Service
