Two men are reportedly in custody and police are searching for a third man in connection with the slaying of a sailor from Chicago who was working on a tall ship in the Bahamas.



The arrests in the fatal shooting of Kyle Bruner, 34, was reported by the Nassau Tribune.



Bruner, 34, a former special education teacher, was apparently trying to help a woman being mugged by two armed men early Sunday when he was shot in the capital city of Nassau, his family said.



According to the Nassau Tribune, Bruner was walking with another man and two women when they were approached by two men dressed in dark clothing, demanding cash. One of the men was armed with a handgun.



Bruner was shot when he apparently tried to stop them from stealing one of the women's jewelery, police told the Tribune. The suspects fled on foot and Bruner was taken to a hospital by ambulance.



Bruner had been living aboard the ship in Nassau while it prepared for its summer trip to its home port in Boston. He was due to leave the Bahamas next week.



"I think about it, and then I start crying," his mother Ginny Bruner said Sunday at her Northwest Side home. "Then I get busy and do something else, and something else sparks a memory and I start crying again."



She said her son, who was born in Maryland and attended high school and college in Indiana, discovered his love of tall ships several years ago while living in California. In recent years, he had considered Chicago his home base.



She and Bruner's father, Rick Bruner, learned of their son's slaying early Sunday when someone called from the American Embassy in Nassau.



Kyle Bruner was a smart man with varied passions, his father said. During high school, he would play the first half with the football team, change into a drum major's uniform, conduct the marching band and be back in pads for the second half.



A former artilleryman in the Indiana Army National Guard, Bruner loved helping others, his father said.



"Maybe we wish he had walked away from" the mugging, Rick Bruner said. "But if he had, he wouldn't have been the person we know."

