On April 10th, 2024 a man in Waynesboro was shot in the leg. He told police that his own gun had gone off, causing the injury, but a witness claimed otherwise and identified a car being driven by 29-year-old Kevin Taylor.
“Waynesboro police chased into Albemarle County where Kevin ran into a guard rail.”
Attorney Jeff Fogel says officers from Waynesboro were quickly joined by Albemarle and state police. They ordered Taylor to surrender, but he refused.
“Kevin was very distraught, and he said, repeatedly, shoot me. I don’t want to go back to prison, so shoot me.”
Taylor had spent some years at Lawrenceville – at the time a privately operated prison. His girlfriend, Infinity Waller, says guards there were abusive, and the experience was traumatic.
“Sometimes they were confined to a cell 23 hours out of a 24 hour day," she recalls. "He dealt with so much unfair treatment and disrespect while he was in jail, and he was like: I can never go back to prison!”
Officers re-routed rush hour traffic as they tried to negotiate with Taylor. He told them he wanted to die, and claimed that if they didn’t shoot him, he would shoot them. Two weapons were later found in the car.
After twenty minutes, a trained negotiator from Albemarle County called Kevin’s mother.
“And he says we have a situation where Kevin is refusing to get out of the car, and he’s asking for you,” Lucille Taylor says.
She was more than willing to talk with her only child.
“The whole time that they were negotiating, he just was saying to them: I know y’all are going to kill me. Just tell my momma I love her. I just want to talk to my mom.’”
But the line went dead before they could talk, and when she called back, no one answered. Officers were, apparently, planning another way to get Kevin Taylor to surrender. Again, lawyer Jeff Fogel.
“Albemarle Police, to their credit, decided they would use a non-lethal weapon – a foam pellet. That person shouts out in the video: ‘Non-lethal! Don’t shoot unless you see a weapon!’ As soon as that non-lethal was discharged, the Waynesboro detective who was standing behind the vehicle emptied his revolver. It appears that the officer who shot Kevin didn't hear about what was going down, and that his discharge of his weapon was what we call sympathetic fire. ‘I heard other officers, and I assumed they knew what they were doing, so I was following up with them.’”
Kevin Taylor was killed, and watching body cam footage, Jeff Fogel recalls nobody said a thing.
“You would have thought one of them would have gone over to the Waynesboro detective and said, ‘Hey, didn’t you hear the officer say: Don’t shoot unless you saw a weapon? No -- absolute silence, because police officers have been trained now to keep their mouths shut.”
Waynesboro Police say they cannot discuss details of an internal investigation. Albemarle County Assistant Chief Randy Jamerson says the incident occurred in his jurisdiction, and there were maybe two dozen officers from his department at the scene, but that didn’t mean they were in charge.
“There is no tag you’re it once you’ve crossed a boundary. We’ve all shown up. Now who’s going to call the shots per se?”
He says officers from Waynesboro, Albemarle and state police agreed on what’s called a unified command.
"We gather all the persons of authority as quickly as possible and start talking about what’s unfolding and how do we best mitigate this,” he explains.
Albemarle had announced its plan to try and end the standoff without killing the suspect, but Jamerson says that was not an order, and other officers were free to fire.
“Because a threat could still present itself, which could cause you to react or change course.”
So Taylor’s loved ones are left with their grief, and without an apology or an admission that mistakes were made, they say they can’t move on.
“No matter what anyone says, my son didn’t have to die that day," Lucille Taylor says. "Policy needs to change so that someone is in charge, and they need to communicate with one another.”
The Albemarle County prosecutor called the case tragic and regrettable but noted officers had spent nearly an hour trying to de-escalate the situation while the suspect threatened them. Jim Hingeley declined to press criminal charges but indicated internal investigations and a civil lawsuit were possible.
Taylor’s mother says she would like to take legal action but cannot afford a lawyer and can’t find one who would take the case at no charge. Jeff Fogel, who’s in solo practice, says this would be a difficult and expensive case to pursue and courts today are inclined to back police. He’s asked larger law firms if they would be willing to help him. So far he’s found none.
