Michigan State Police Trooper Paul K. Butterfield II

LUDINGTON, MI – The courtroom was hushed as three witnesses in a row – all crying – described coming upon Michigan State Trooper Paul K. Butterfield II lying shot in the head, face down on Custer Road near Townline Road in Mason County.

The testimony was wrenching.

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Butterfield was alive and, it seemed to the witnesses, aware of their presence as they tried to comfort him and stem the bleeding from a gigantic hole in the right side of his head.

“He was conscious,” said Connie Helton, the first to arrive on the scene, at most three minutes after Butterfield was shot. “He didn’t answer or talk to me.

“But he did raise up his head, pat his chest. ... He was patting his chest continuously,” Helton said. “I knelt by him, told him to just hold on.

“He just kept patting his chest. I prayed with him. (He) just picked up his head a couple more times. I just believe that he was aware.”

The 43-year-old Butterfield, shot at a traffic stop at about 6:20 p.m. Sept. 9, 2013, died late that night after being airlifted by helicopter to Munson Medical Center in Traverse City.

Eric John Knysz, 20, of the Irons area, is on trial in Mason County Circuit Court for Butterfield’s death, charged with murder of a peace officer and other felony counts.

The first prosecution witnesses Wednesday, Feb. 19, told similar stories. All were emotional.

Helton described arriving to the scene a couple of minutes after Butterfield was shot. Her call to 911 was logged at 6:23 p.m. Butterfield’s traffic stop call to Central Dispatch, noting the license number of the pickup truck he was pulling over, was at 6:20.

Northbound on Custer, driving home from her pharmacy tech job at Ludington’s hospital, she noticed a state police car pulled over with its overhead red light flashing. “I noticed that there was a state policeman lying face down in the road,” she testified, beginning to cry.

“I got out of my car and started running toward him, screaming, ‘Officer! Officer!’”

She saw he’d been shot in the right side of his head above his eye. Asked by Mason County Prosecutor Paul Spaniola to compare the size of the hole to a coin, she said, “I would have to say at least the size of a 50-cent piece. It was very large.”

The second witness was the second driver on the scene, Shannon Comstock. Driving her two children home from soccer practice, she described Helton waving her arms to get her to stop. Comstock backed up to get her children out of sight of the trooper and ran to help.

She said she saw “gray matter” coming from the trooper’s head as well as a lot of blood. He lay face down, nose on the pavement, his arms drawn up to his chest.

“He was breathing very heavily. He was patting his chest. ... He was patting his chest for a long time.”

After calling 911 – Helton had already done so first – Comstock called her husband, Charles Comstock, a former Scottville fire lieutenant with some first-responder training, who was at a deer blind nearby. He came immediately.

Together they tried to stem the bleeding using small gauze pieces from a first-aid kit.

And they talked to Butterfield to comfort him. He seemed to respond. “When you talked to him, his breathing slowed,” she said.

“He moaned. He moaned so bad.”

Charles Comstock, the third witness, wept almost continuously as he testified.

He seemed devastated by his inability to help Butterfield despite his best efforts.

While trying to hold gauze to the gaping wound, Comstock tried first the trooper’s collar microphone, then his radio to call Central Dispatch while the women continued calling 911, pressing for help to arrive.

When a Mason County Sheriff’s deputy arrived, he told Charles Comstock, “'They call him Butters,’” Comstock testified.

So the former firefighter rubbed the fallen trooper’s back, "tried to befriend this man I so desperately wanted to help ... It just didn't seem enough."

In his opening statement to jurors, prosecutor Spaniola laid out what he hoped to prove.

He said it’s unknown why Butterfield pulled over the pickup truck.

But, Spaniola said, Knysz’s motive in shooting the trooper was clear: He was transporting guns he had stolen from his father, John Knysz of Irons, and feared being arrested, Spaniola said.

Knysz was “afraid because he had a gun in the car, also not wanting to be caught for it, he shot Paul Butterfield,” Spaniola said.

Spaniola quoted what he called “Paul Butterfield’s last words,” which jurors would hear on a Central Dispatch recording: “Custer and Townline, with (the truck’s license plate number).”

Butterfield's fiancee, Jennifer Sielski, and his family members including his father, retired state trooper Paul T. Butterfield of Frankenmuth, sat in the audience.

The trial was to resume at 1:45 p.m. with more prosecution witnesses.

John S. Hausman covers courts, prisons, the environment and local government for MLive Muskegon Chronicle. Email him at jhausman@mlive.com and follow him on Twitter.