First in a three-part series.

The shots rang out shortly after midnight, Dec. 27, 2009, shattering the warm illusion of holiday merriment.

Those shots haven't finished running their course.

What started with a spilled drink and an angry word has left those directly involved in the shooting desperately trying to recapture normal lives. And the shots heard 'round downtown have impinged on the habits and the sensibilities of residents while transforming city policies and procedures, with more change on the way.

A STORM BREWS

The confrontation on the street stemmed from one earlier that evening, inside the Underground Bar on Sherman Avenue.

Inside the crowded bar, Brandon Burgess, visiting from Moses Lake, Wash., with several friends, was celebrating the Christmas weekend with his mother, Holly Burgess of Coeur d'Alene.

Around 10:30 p.m. in the dance club, a friend of Brandon's bumped into Adam Johnson - or the other way around - and a drink spilled.

Accounts of the initial confrontation vary, according to police reports, but an argument ensued and the parties separated without incident.

Brandon, in a separate area of the bar, never saw it.

"Some guys are trying to start a fight with me," Johnson told a friend, who saw him later that evening in Underground, police reports state. The friend told officers Johnson, a Coeur d'Alene resident, made the remark nonchalantly; he didn't seem all that bothered.

By then Brandon and Holly Burgess, along with Brandon's younger brother Jordan and a couple of other friends, were at the Torch Lounge on Coeur d'Alene Avenue. The Torch is two blocks north of Sherman Avenue, the downtown's main strip with bars and restaurants that bustle with crowds on holidays and summer weekends.

Shortly after midnight, Johnson was walking on Sherman Avenue to his car. He said later that he was going to put his semi-automatic Kahr .40 caliber handgun away.

He had a concealed weapons permit and often carried the weapon, but was going to put it in his car because he had "one or two" drinks, he said.

Leaving the Torch, Holly, Brandon, Jordan Burgess and their friends were heading to the Shore Lounge, a bar inside the Coeur d'Alene Resort, the waterfront hotel one block south of the strip.

Near the corner of Third Street, in front of the Painter's Chair Fine Art Gallery on Sherman Avenue, the parties crossed. Words were exchanged. And here the stories diverge.

SHOTS FIRED

Johnson remembers fearing for his life and pulling his weapon as six or seven men formed a half circle around him.

"Stop," he commanded.

But they didn't, he said, and he remembers being tackled from behind and falling to the ground; being kicked repeatedly in the face, chin, cheek, and the back of his head - "a stomping," Johnson called it - and then the "pop, pop, pop" of the gun as he fired from the ground; losing consciousness and finally coming to with a police officer standing over him.

"Help me," Johnson told the officer.

"What do you need help with?" the officer asked.

"They attacked me," Johnson said, and then he was in the back of a police car leaning out of the back door spitting blood down to the pavement.

But Brandon remembers differently. He remembers standing on the curb off of Third Street when Johnson darted across Sherman toward the group, which had separated into smaller groups, walking at different paces.

It started as normal conversation, Brandon, 27, said, but the words grew more fierce, tones elevated and then the gun came out and Johnson yelled "Who's in charge now?"

Brandon remembers the first "pop" while he was standing.

"Guys, I'm hit," he said.

"Like a bee sting," he said later. "The pain part came later. Learning how to breathe, all that stuff, getting your lungs working again."

Burgess tightened his belt to put pressure on the wound. Then he laid down on his back in the front doorway of the gallery and he remembers his eyes fluttering and his mother putting a coat over him and laying on top of him and he opened his eyes briefly and his brother Jordan was leaning over him then, kissing him, saying "I love you Brandon."

The ambulance ride to Kootenai Health and the life-flight helicopter to Harborview Medical Center is a blur. It would be from his Seattle hospital bed that Brandon would wake and start to put the pieces from that night back together.

CITY REACTS

Shortly after that night, the Coeur d'Alene City Council acted.

It increased police patrols downtown and enforced several new rules to make it safer for patrons.

Some council members said at the time downtown was gaining a bad reputation.

"If we get a reputation downtown for the wild, wild West," then-councilman John Bruning said during a February 2010 meeting, "it'll drive business out."

"We're all in this together," Councilman Mike Kennedy echoed at the same meeting.

Two summers have passed since then.

The shooting happened at Christmas, but summers, when Coeur d'Alene's population swells with visitors and part-time residents, was the season that most concerned the council.

And since then, reports of violent crimes like malicious injury and assaults have dropped downtown, compared to the two years previous, according to police reports reviewed by The Press.

Other infractions, like alcohol and disorderly conduct, have increased, those reports show.

DARK LIGHTS

At least the lights are coming down.

For Holly, Brandon's mother, the thousands of bulbs, mostly white, wrapped around the 150 honey locust trees lining Lakeside and Sherman avenues and hanging from the branches of the two dozen globe and red maples standing in front of the Resort burn every Christmas like a searing reminder.

"Right now I have a hard time driving down Sherman Avenue," she said. "The lights, that's what I avoid."

Holly actually noticed the Coeur d'Alene lights from a hospital room in Seattle.

She was sitting next to her unconscious son as he lay in a hospital bed at Harborview Medical Center when those lights throbbed through the television as a Spokane-based news broadcaster stood in front of them and reported what Holly and her son had just experienced.

"She was standing in front of the white lights there and I don't know," Holly said. "That's hard for me."

That was the moment reality started to creep back in for the 14-year Coeur d'Alene resident after a night out celebrating the holiday weekend with her children and friends laughing, drinking followed by an argument of some sort.

She remembers standing on the street and seeing Johnson, who she knew from town.

"Don't go to the Shore," she remembers Johnson told the group. "It's dead."

"We make our own (bleeping) party," one of the members snapped back.

Then came the argument, she remembers. And then she saw Brandon tighten his belt and then someone threw a coat over him in the doorway, then she lay on him to pressure his wound and keep him warm as Brandon kept saying, "I'm cold. I'm so cold."

Tomorrow: The Burgess family grows closer.

Coming up

• In Part II Monday: The Burgess family grows closer.

• In Part III Tuesday: The road to recovery for Adam Johnson and a look at downtown Coeur d'Alene's crime statistics.