Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, October 13, 1995 TAG: 9510130061
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: KATHY LOAN AND ELISSA MILENKY STAFF WRITERS
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG LENGTH: Long
Circuit Judge Kenneth I. Devore released the 19-year-old Taylor from jail for part of a day to attend the funeral. In return, Taylor wrote the judge, thanking him for the gesture and promising to honor his grandmother's memory by turning his life around.
"She was literally my mother, as she raised me more than anyone," Taylor wrote. "... She made me feel good about myself, worthwhile, and always believed in me."
Letters from Taylor and his loved ones continued over the next year and a half. They asked that he be released early or allowed to serve his time on weekends so he could provide for his then-fiancee and his young daughter and infant son and take care of his grandmother's house.
"I understand you sentenced me to teach me a lesson," Taylor wrote the judge. "I have learned that lesson, grown up and learned more about life and responsibilities during my stay here in jail than I've learned in the last seventeen years of my life."
His requests were denied. But he was released in February 1994 on probation to begin living up to the promises he'd made.
They were promises he apparently couldn't keep.
On Aug. 9, while standing in a checkout line at a Blacksburg pharmacy, Taylor was approached by three town police officers who wanted to arrest him for probation violation. He pulled a weapon - a BB pistol that resembled a large-caliber Desert Eagle handgun.
Two officers opened fire on Taylor, striking him a dozen times. Taylor, who never fired his weapon, died. The third officer was wounded by one of the bullets fired by his fellow officers.
The portrait that court documents paint of Taylor is of a troubled youth who grew into a troubled young adult despite the promises to turn his life around. He would get in trouble with the law because of problems with alcohol, drugs or weapons, straighten out, then find himself back in the court system - or trying to avoid it.
"My opinion of Maurice was that he'd always come back from those things. He'd get in trouble, then he'd straighten up. It seemed like the older he got, the longer it took to straighten up," said Mary Todd, a former Pulaski County High School teacher and family friend.
Taylor's problems began early. When he was 11, his family began to seek help through the courts. He was in the Roanoke Valley Psychiatric Center twice, the first time after a school suspension for possession of marijuana on school property, the second because of threats of suicide and homicide, according to court records.
A Salem juvenile court judge ruled Taylor was "an imminent danger to himself and others as a result of mental illness."
Court files show Taylor's first brush with the criminal justice system came at age 13 when he was charged with destruction of private property and ordered to make restitution. In late 1989, before he turned 17, he had been charged in Pulaski County with possessing alcohol, marijuana, cocaine and a concealed weapon.
He told a counselor he had carried the gun for years.
Image was important to Taylor, friends said. His nickname among some of his closest friends was "Baby Al," after the mobster Al Capone. The name symbolized Taylor's habit of "talking big" to impress friends rather than any criminal infamy, said Taylor's cousin, Charles Arnold. Arnold recalled a time Taylor claimed to have $1,000 in his pocket when he really had $2.
Taylor had a large circle of friends from his days of growing up on Baskerville Street in Dublin. The group, including Taylor, showed their unity by branding their arms or chests with the letter "H" for "Hounds of the Baskerville."
"He'd talk," Arnold said. "He wanted people to think big of him."
Friends said Taylor also was known for his handsome face and his charm with women. While others played basketball, "he was on the sidelines talking to the ladies," said Brad Smith, a friend.
In January 1991, Taylor was charged in Radford with unauthorized use of a car. He was put on probation. A disorderly conduct charge netted him 25 hours of community service work. He was ordered to have drug counseling for possession of marijuana.
Patricia Arnold, who described herself as Taylor's second mother at a forum last month on the shooting, said she and her husband often would talk with Taylor about his troubles, especially during the four years he lived in her home while attending Pulaski County High School. She used to hound Taylor regularly about skipping school.
"He would smile and say, 'I know I messed up. I'm sorry,'" Arnold said.
Taylor had little contact with his biological father, identifying his stepfather as a father figure even after the man and his mother were divorced in the mid-1980s.
"His mother, I know she raised him best she could," Patricia Arnold said. "I guess a child growing up without his father, I think they lack something in life. They lack that role model."
When Taylor was placed on juvenile probation in 1990 for the Pulaski County offenses, he kept his appointments with court officials and appeared to make a positive adjustment, court records say. After the Radford charge, though, Taylor ignored a court order to get psychiatric treatment. Two months later, he was charged in a Blacksburg robbery.
On March 8, 1991, Taylor was one of four people who entered a retired man's apartment on the pretense of looking for a friend. While Taylor used the telephone, another man grabbed the retiree and took several hundred dollars.
A judge ruled that Taylor should be tried as an adult. In 1992, he was convicted and ordered to serve three years of a five-year prison sentence.
After his grandmother's death, his letters to the judge began to be added to his court file.
Three months after Taylor was released, his probation officer sought a warrant for his arrest after Taylor was charged with carrying a concealed weapon - a BB pistol - and driving with a suspended license.
One witness complained that Taylor had pulled the pistol from his waistband after an argument in front of a Blacksburg bar, "cocked it and said something to the effect of `You wanna go?''' according to court records.
The probation officer also reported that Taylor had tested positive for cocaine in May 1994.
"The picture of him was not that," said Mary Todd, the family friend. "He was around the crowd that did that. You didn't see him high." She said she knew he smoked marijuana but had not known of any hard drug use or drug dealing.
Taylor was convicted of the concealed weapon charge in August 1994 and two months later was on his way back to jail after a judge revoked his probation.
In February of this year, Taylor was released on probation. Two months later, another court date was set on allegations that he had again violated probation regulations. The court ordered him to be in court July 14.
He didn't show up. A month later, Blacksburg police tracked him down at the Blacksburg pharmacy.
Friends say Maurice Taylor was not a violent person.
"This was not a cold-hearted person who carried a BB gun to do harm to people. I think the BB gun was for bravado," Todd said.
"The news portrayed him as a gangster," said Bill Lewis, another friend. "He was a real guy."
But Charles Arnold worried about his cousin. He knew of Taylor's history of problems with the law and was aware that Taylor had missed a court date and was avoiding police. And he was not surprised - just angry - when he heard Taylor had been shot by police.
"He knew he had some jail time coming," Arnold said. "He just got out of jail. He didn't want to go back."
What does not make sense to Arnold and others close to Taylor is why he was shot 12 times. They wonder if police would have approached the situation differently if Taylor had been white.
If Taylor had lived, many friends and relative think he would have turned his life around.
"He was ashamed when he brought [his family] pain or embarrassment," Todd said. "I think it would eventually come together."
by CNB