From the Norfolk, VA Virginian-Pilot Newspaper:
One man's deadly choice
By LINDA MCNATT, The Virginian-Pilot
© September 29, 2005
Last updated: 1:57 AM
It was late when they got home, so late that the cluster of town houses at the top of the hill was dark.
Earlier this month, Fred Taylor, a Suffolk native and first-year law student at Mercer University, was returning from a fancy birthday dinner with his girlfriend to his home in Macon, Ga.
When the couple went inside, Taylor switched on the lights in the living room, the dining room and kitchen. Ceiling fans whirred.
Taylor’s girlfriend, Adrienne Warren, 22, went upstairs, changed clothes and settled downstairs on the couch in front of the TV. Taylor, also 22, was watching “Law & Order,” sitting in a chair across the room.
Warren, a senior at Christopher Newport University in Newport News, remembers that she dozed off for a while. The TV show was ending when she woke up around midnight.
That’s when Taylor heard something outside the dining room window, footsteps on the wooden deck.
“Get upstairs,” he told Warren. “Somebody’s outside.”
She ignored him.
Instead, she walked across the room and peered out of the peep hole on the front door. The motion-detection floodlight at the front of the house erupted, but Warren said she couldn’t see anybody.
She felt her boyfriend lay his hand on her shoulder. He told her to get away from the door and go upstairs.
By then, he had cut out all of the lights in the house, turned off the television and gone upstairs to retrieve his gun. Taylor, who graduated from Nansemond River High School and Old Dominion University, had gotten the gun, a .357 Magnum, after applying for a concealed weapons permit a year ago. He traveled a lot late at night for a civic organization, he said, and believes in the right to bear arms.
Taylor quickly pushed his girlfriend up the stairs and into the bedroom . He told her to lock the door. By that time, both of them could hear the screen being cut on the dining room window.
Taylor was still at the top of the stairs and Warren was on the phone to the police when they heard glass break, echoing through the three-level house with hardwood floors.
The alarm system blared like a siren, Taylor said.
Upstairs, a trembling Warren didn’t know what was happening below.
Holding the handgun in both hands, Taylor started back down the stairs. At the second landing, he stopped, sat down and waited.
Edward Wayne Anderson, 42, had gotten out of jail the day before after serving time for pimping prostitutes, according to Macon police. On the night of Sept. 17, Anderson walked past the other dark houses on Taylor’s street.
He walked up onto the deck around the second floor of Taylor’s town house, popped the top off a Smirnoff Ice, left the top near one of the doors and eventually threw the bottle in the backyard, police said.
Before the glass broke, the couple heard Anderson painstakingly try each of three downstairs doors, rattling the knobs. He disarmed the house’s automatic sprinkler system. Taylor said he might have thought it was the alarm.
Sitting on the landing, five steps above the dining room, Taylor saw Anderson’s hand, wrapped in a rag, reach through the broken window glass. He heard him ease the window up.
The darkness inside the house was dotted with several night lights Taylor liked to leave on. Anderson , who according to police had a string of convictions in the Macon area, stepped through the window and looked up the stairs, where his eyes met Taylor’s.
Taylor remembers thinking that there would be no negotiations.
Taylor fired his gun once, striking Anderson in the upper torso.
Anderson fell over, and Taylor ran back upstairs.
It took several seconds to persuade Warren to open the door. When he got inside the bedroom, he turned and locked the door again. The police were outside by then.
By the time police led Warren downstairs, a sheet had been hung to hide Anderson’s lifeless body.
Taylor’s family from Virginia arrived a week ago, after Warren had left from the Atlanta airport to go home.
The blood has been cleaned up by a service the police recommended.
The screen and window have been repaired, the sprinkler system reconnected and the alarm system checked.
Just a few days after the incident that made front-page headlines in Macon, police returned the .357 Magnum to Taylor.
He will not be charged in the incident, said Howard Simms , district attorney for the Macon Judicial Circuit. Georgia law is similar to Virginia’s, he said. If somebody makes a forcible entry into your home, you are entitled to defend yourself.
“There is no doubt about what happened,” Simms said. “You can hear the window glass breaking on the 911 tape.”
When Warren returned to school on Tuesday, her Shakespeare class was studying Richard III, a monstrous villain who, in Shakespeare’s play, killed everybody who got in his way.
She said her professor turned to her and asked if she thought Richard got what he deserved.
“Good riddance to bad rubbish,” she remembers saying.
And she cried, ending up in a counselor’s office for several hours. For her, she said, the experience will never be over.
Looking back, Taylor said he believes that Anderson thought Warren was in the house alone. He thinks Anderson may have peeped through the crack at the side of the blinds on the window and seen Warren on the couch.
“I regret being put in the position I was put in,” Taylor said. “I regret having to take a human life.”
But under the same circumstances, he said, he’d do it again.
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One man's deadly choice
By LINDA MCNATT, The Virginian-Pilot
© September 29, 2005
Last updated: 1:57 AM
It was late when they got home, so late that the cluster of town houses at the top of the hill was dark.
Earlier this month, Fred Taylor, a Suffolk native and first-year law student at Mercer University, was returning from a fancy birthday dinner with his girlfriend to his home in Macon, Ga.
When the couple went inside, Taylor switched on the lights in the living room, the dining room and kitchen. Ceiling fans whirred.
Taylor’s girlfriend, Adrienne Warren, 22, went upstairs, changed clothes and settled downstairs on the couch in front of the TV. Taylor, also 22, was watching “Law & Order,” sitting in a chair across the room.
Warren, a senior at Christopher Newport University in Newport News, remembers that she dozed off for a while. The TV show was ending when she woke up around midnight.
That’s when Taylor heard something outside the dining room window, footsteps on the wooden deck.
“Get upstairs,” he told Warren. “Somebody’s outside.”
She ignored him.
Instead, she walked across the room and peered out of the peep hole on the front door. The motion-detection floodlight at the front of the house erupted, but Warren said she couldn’t see anybody.
She felt her boyfriend lay his hand on her shoulder. He told her to get away from the door and go upstairs.
By then, he had cut out all of the lights in the house, turned off the television and gone upstairs to retrieve his gun. Taylor, who graduated from Nansemond River High School and Old Dominion University, had gotten the gun, a .357 Magnum, after applying for a concealed weapons permit a year ago. He traveled a lot late at night for a civic organization, he said, and believes in the right to bear arms.
Taylor quickly pushed his girlfriend up the stairs and into the bedroom . He told her to lock the door. By that time, both of them could hear the screen being cut on the dining room window.
Taylor was still at the top of the stairs and Warren was on the phone to the police when they heard glass break, echoing through the three-level house with hardwood floors.
The alarm system blared like a siren, Taylor said.
Upstairs, a trembling Warren didn’t know what was happening below.
Holding the handgun in both hands, Taylor started back down the stairs. At the second landing, he stopped, sat down and waited.
Edward Wayne Anderson, 42, had gotten out of jail the day before after serving time for pimping prostitutes, according to Macon police. On the night of Sept. 17, Anderson walked past the other dark houses on Taylor’s street.
He walked up onto the deck around the second floor of Taylor’s town house, popped the top off a Smirnoff Ice, left the top near one of the doors and eventually threw the bottle in the backyard, police said.
Before the glass broke, the couple heard Anderson painstakingly try each of three downstairs doors, rattling the knobs. He disarmed the house’s automatic sprinkler system. Taylor said he might have thought it was the alarm.
Sitting on the landing, five steps above the dining room, Taylor saw Anderson’s hand, wrapped in a rag, reach through the broken window glass. He heard him ease the window up.
The darkness inside the house was dotted with several night lights Taylor liked to leave on. Anderson , who according to police had a string of convictions in the Macon area, stepped through the window and looked up the stairs, where his eyes met Taylor’s.
Taylor remembers thinking that there would be no negotiations.
Taylor fired his gun once, striking Anderson in the upper torso.
Anderson fell over, and Taylor ran back upstairs.
It took several seconds to persuade Warren to open the door. When he got inside the bedroom, he turned and locked the door again. The police were outside by then.
By the time police led Warren downstairs, a sheet had been hung to hide Anderson’s lifeless body.
Taylor’s family from Virginia arrived a week ago, after Warren had left from the Atlanta airport to go home.
The blood has been cleaned up by a service the police recommended.
The screen and window have been repaired, the sprinkler system reconnected and the alarm system checked.
Just a few days after the incident that made front-page headlines in Macon, police returned the .357 Magnum to Taylor.
He will not be charged in the incident, said Howard Simms , district attorney for the Macon Judicial Circuit. Georgia law is similar to Virginia’s, he said. If somebody makes a forcible entry into your home, you are entitled to defend yourself.
“There is no doubt about what happened,” Simms said. “You can hear the window glass breaking on the 911 tape.”
When Warren returned to school on Tuesday, her Shakespeare class was studying Richard III, a monstrous villain who, in Shakespeare’s play, killed everybody who got in his way.
She said her professor turned to her and asked if she thought Richard got what he deserved.
“Good riddance to bad rubbish,” she remembers saying.
And she cried, ending up in a counselor’s office for several hours. For her, she said, the experience will never be over.
Looking back, Taylor said he believes that Anderson thought Warren was in the house alone. He thinks Anderson may have peeped through the crack at the side of the blinds on the window and seen Warren on the couch.
“I regret being put in the position I was put in,” Taylor said. “I regret having to take a human life.”
But under the same circumstances, he said, he’d do it again.
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