The Virginian Pilot ^ | 9/29/05 | LINDA MCNATT

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.

regret hell........

Should be able to do that anywhere.

Time for a Party!!!

I would have done the same thing, except with a rifle.

Can't take the chance the perp might live.

I'd probably reget it too. . .I'd regret being *forced* to take someone's life because of their stupidity

Thug down, thug down! Medic!

Err, mortician!

Quoted: regret hell........

Naw, I can see where hes coming from. Its not like anybody WANTS their house broken into so they can shoot the intruder. It sucks that guy made him do it. He's got the right outlook.

He disarmed the house’s automatic sprinkler system.


Dumbass.

One less oxygen thief.

Quoted: Just a few days after the incident that made front-page headlines in Macon, police returned the .357 Magnum to Taylor.

Huzzah for victim disarmament


EDITED TO ADD:  AND after publishing in the paper the guy's name and possibly street.

Quoted: He disarmed the house’s automatic sprinkler system. Dumbass. One less oxygen thief.

Quick question, a senior moment but in NY do we have to retreat even in our home,( instead of VA, it was NY)?  I think it would be the same.

Quoted: Quoted: Just a few days after the incident that made front-page headlines in Macon, police returned the .357 Magnum to Taylor. Huzzah for victim disarmament EDITED TO ADD:  AND after publishing in the paper the guy's name and possibly street.

 I seriously doubt you could shoot anyone anywhere without having your gun taken until your cleared of any wrong doing, and sadly enough, someone in your house usually isn't enough justification to kill them.

Cool.  One less scumbag.

Good news for everybody.

Quoted: He disarmed the house’s automatic sprinkler system. Dumbass. One less oxygen thief.

I thought rapists preferred home alarms?

Glad to see that shitbag off the street.

Looks like the good ole' .357mag did the trick again.

It may not have been the way I would have handled it, but at least the outcome is the same: Everyone who matters is still okay.


How about the insensative idiot of  professor, that poor girl was apparently still feeling victimized.  I hope that she embraces gun ownership and discovers that they can be fun as well as useful.

Good riddance. Who knows what he'd have done to the woman had she been alone. Hell the guy was a fucking pimp. God knows what they do to women.

I am sure that the last thing on the homeowner's minds when they came home that night was having to shoot somebody. The guy did a great job under those circumstances. Waiting on the landing with your kids/wife behind you is always a good plan.

If there had been no gun in the home God only knows what could have happened.

Score a big +1 for the good guys.

Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: Just a few days after the incident that made front-page headlines in Macon, police returned the .357 Magnum to Taylor. Huzzah for victim disarmament EDITED TO ADD:  AND after publishing in the paper the guy's name and possibly street.  I seriously doubt you could shoot anyone anywhere without having your gun taken until your cleared of any wrong doing, and sadly enough, someone in your house usually isn't enough justification to kill them.

Well that is why you have more than one gun.

Cops have to turn in the guns they use in a shooting.  Actually they usually have to turn in every gun they have ON THEM at the time.

In the unfree states (CA, MA, NJ, IL, parts of MD and NY, DC) cops have been known to REALLY disarm the victim and take every gun in the house claiming they have to account for everything so they know you didn't use a plant gun especally if they find weapons on the corpse.

But in VA it seems that, like in most places, they will only ask you for the one you actualy fired.  They will take it and usually get a sample fired case to compare with the ones found on your floor and a recoverd bullet to compare to the ones in the deceased.

You will get the gun back in a few days unless you have a anti-gun DA who gets his rocks off harassing people.  But you should know if thats the case in your area just by watching TV.  

Nice shot, I hope he got some extra luvin! He should've shot the perp again, just to be sure.

Quoted: Nice shot, I hope he got some extra luvin! He should've shot the perp again, just to be sure.

He better be getting appreciation head for years.  I bet he gives the cops 100 bucks to tell the girl that the guy had planned to rape her and kill her, and her man saved her from that hell.  I would.

Quoted: The Virginian Pilot ^ | 9/29/05 | LINDA MCNATT <snip> 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.” <snip>

I am so glad to hear this view from a GA DA.  I was worried  about this kid.   I gotta say, this kid is lucky that the DA took an expansive view of the Georgia law.  Its really not as clear as the article would imply that someone breaking in is enough to justify lethal force (as it is with the new FLA law).  I was taught by GA cops in my handgun safety course the phrase "i feared for my life and the life of others". Maybe the kid said he was afraid for his life and his girlfriends.

“I regret being put in the position I was put in,” Taylor said. “I regret having to take a human life.”

Regret, whats to regret????? The fucking thug put you in the position to take the action that you did, it's the fucking thugs fault that you had to pull the trigger, it's the fuking thugs fault you had to endure all that you've had to endure. Got it? It's the thugs fault, not yours. No regrets, one less thug.

lets just hope there is no civil suit from scumbags family.

Good shoot.

To bad everyone doesnt do that. God job to this guy I say

Here is another article where it is clear that he feared bodily harm --- the key element in a justified shooting in Georgia.  Its pretty self freakin evident to me, but to some bleeding heart DA, it might not be.

www.macon.com/mld/macon/news/local/12767934.htm

Grant Blankenship, The Telegraph
Fred Taylor stands by the window in his Macon apartment where an intruder recently broke in.

Mercer student cleared of wrongdoing in fatal shooting of intruder

By Tim Sturrock

TELEGRAPH STAFF WRITER

Fred Taylor shot and killed a man last week, but the Bibb County district attorney said Wednesday the shooting was justified.

The incident began in the early morning hours of Sept. 18 when Taylor heard someone outside of his Walnut Street home in Macon.

A few minutes later, Taylor said, the intruder broke a window and climbed inside. With the burglar alarm blaring, Taylor's girlfriend was upstairs frantically talking to a 911 dispatcher.

"I'm thinking to myself, if the alarm has not deterred this guy, something is going on," said Taylor, a 21-year-old Mercer University law student. "In my mind, I'm thinking he is going to do us some harm."

The incident ended with Taylor fatally shooting Edward Anderson, 42, police said. Police said they don't know Anderson's motive for the break-in.

District Attorney Howard Simms said Wednesday that Taylor, of Suffolk, Va., will not be charged.

Simms said the case is "crystal clear" and that Taylor did nothing wrong.

Simms said that under Georgia law, people have the right to defend their homes with force if they know the intruder broke into the home and isn't a family member.

Taylor said he was relieved by the decision, but the incident still weighs on his mind.

"It takes some time before you stop constantly thinking about it," he said, explaining that he's trying to focus on his school work.

The night of the shooting, Taylor said, he was watching television with his girlfriend, Adrienne Warren. He said they heard someone, later identified as Anderson, outside on the porch. Warren went upstairs to call police, and Taylor grabbed his gun, Taylor said.

Taylor said he then turned off the lights and the television to let Anderson know someone was home. Moments later, Anderson started jiggling locks on the windows and doors, Taylor said.

Taylor said he waited on his staircase with his gun in his hand. The intruder broke the window pane, and the alarm started to scream, Taylor said.

"I was scared for my life," he said.

Anderson climbed through the window and walked past the stairs, Taylor said.

Taylor said he couldn't wait any longer. He fired a single shot, striking Anderson in the upper torso.

Taylor said he didn't know then if Anderson was dead or if he had a weapon. According to the 911 tape released Wednesday by Macon police, Warren was upstairs at the time of the shooting. She began screaming and crying when she heard a bang. She told dispatchers she didn't know who had been shot, according to the tape.

After police arrived, Taylor and his girlfriend went to the police station and talked to police, Taylor said. Four hours later, a private company had cleaned the scene, and Taylor went to bed.

"You never feel good about something like this," he said.

Taylor said moving to another house has occurred to him, but he acknowledged "it could happen anywhere. It could happen to anyone."

Taylor's lawyer, Doye Green, said Taylor did nothing wrong.

"Now this young man and young woman will have a mental scar for life," Green said.

Quoted: Bump? Push one button in my bedroom and every light in the house comes on 100% bright except for the ones in the bedroom which light just at 10%.

I've contemplated doing this in my house, too.  Neat idea.


The thing that worries me is if the alarm is blaring, I wake up and can't hear anything going on inside the house.  I'd have to grab the 12 gauge and just sit and wait in the bedroom, and probably couldn't carry on a conversation with 911 due to the alarm.  Hell, I don't remember if the alarm company that monitors my house would turn it off for me once I didn't answer their phone call (to check if it was a false alarm).  One of those things I'd better look into now before I need it.

You guys have to read a book on this subject called "On Combat" written by an Army LtCol he talks about cops and military guys after shooting the bad guys justifiably a lot go through a doubting and regret stage which sometimes lead to PTSD....regret is a normal post reaction....

I bet he gets "hero" sex for a month with his GF

Here's to you bro

Quoted: Here is another article where it is clear that he feared bodily harm --- the key element in a justified shooting in Georgia.  Its pretty self freakin evident to me, but to some bleeding heart DA, it might not be.

Don't worry. It will be quite clear to the jury. If the perp is still breaking in while the alarm is blaring, then it looks like he wants to add: robbery, rape, murder, arson, and etc... We'll never know because the guy fulfilled his manly duty and protected his woman.

Quoted: regret hell........

Have to say it for the civil suit defense.

Quoted: Have to say it for the civil suit defense.

Shoot them, too.

All I can think about when I read stories like this is that if Ilived in a high crime area where home invasions were common...


I'd never have to buy dog food again!!

Quoted: I bet he gets "hero" sex for a month with his GF Here's to you bro

Don't count on it. She'll probably have to enter therapy and dump him for "ruining her life".

Quoted: Quoted: I bet he gets "hero" sex for a month with his GF Here's to you bro Don't count on it. She'll probably have to enter therapy and dump him for "ruining her life".

Yep.  I don't quite get why she is so scarred and broke down crying. She went and hid and called 911 like she was supposed to. Maybe I'm just callous, but I don't see it.

Damn Nice Shot!!

“I regret being put in the position I was put in,” Taylor said. “I regret having to take a human life.”

Oh, STFU.  You did well boy!!

Pimp-Master Thug took the time to disable the sprinkler system (first sign he is a dumbass), drank a wine cooler and tossed it in the back yard, tried opening 3 seperate doors, cut the screen on a window, broke the glass in said window, opened window, climbed in window, all while the fucking alarm was blaring?

He got exactly what he deserved! Fucking loser.

And this is why I commandeered my dad's .357 Magnum and not the 9mm or the other .45.

At least the tax payers don't  have to pay for the pimps jail time anymore.

Give the shooter  a reward, maybe he and the woman could use a vacation, at least buy him a round  to replace the one he discharged.

I would not want to take a life, but I am less excited about giving up mine or that of a loved one.

Good job Mr. Taylor. Hopefully, in time, you will realize the thug left you with the only decision that you could make and you won't feel as bad about having made it.

As Boortz says, DRT ("Dead Right There").

I was not happy about the editor's (The Virginian Pilot) choice of the title for that article and it appears I wasn't alone. Here is an article that appears in this mornings paper:

Desperate time calls for desperate measure The Virginian-Pilot © October 1, 2005 Open the paper almost any day, and you’ll get a serving of mayhem with your morning muffin. The news is often numbingly the same. A sickening account of crimes committed against hapless victims. Not Thursday. That day’s Pilot served up something completely different. An event so out of the ordinary that the editors slapped it on the front page. One Man’s Deadly Choice Not exactly the headline I would have written. Then again, if I were any good at writing headlines, I’d get to pen the ones that sit atop this column. I don’t. Mine would have been something like this: Good Guy Stops Bad Guy With Bullet That’s just me. And yet, that’s essentially what happened in the wee hours of Sept. 18 in a town house in Macon, Ga., not far from the Mercer University campus. According to Pilot reporter Linda McNatt, that was when a 22-year-old Suffolk man shot to death a stranger who had broken into his house. Fred Taylor, a first-year law student at Mercer, told me that a piece of evidence collected by police after the break-in could indicate that the intruder had something more than burglary on his mind that night. It was a condom, still in its wrapper. Just outside the second-story window that the intruder used to enter the house. Maybe it innocently fell out of his pocket. Maybe it was carried up there by a breeze. Or maybe the intruder thought Taylor’s girlfriend was alone and planned to rape her. A condom would prevent any telltale DNA evidence being left at the scene, Taylor says. If that’s the case, the intruder was wrong. Dead wrong. And as it turned out, he left a lot of DNA behind. In case you missed it, here’s a synopsis of what happened: Mr. Taylor and Adrienne Warren, a student at Christopher Newport University, were watching late-night TV in his living room. She was on the couch and he was in a chair, which is important, because from the vantage point of someone peering in the window, it may have looked as if Ms. Warren was alone. They heard noises on the deck. Ms. Warren headed to the bedroom to phone 911, while Mr. Taylor grabbed his .357 Magnum. Mr. Taylor is comfortable with firearms. He says he learned to handle a gun as a kid when he was growing up in Suffolk, a place he wants to return someday to hang out his shingle. He killed the intruder in his dining room with a single shot, although he says he isn’t much of a marksman. He definitely isn’t Dirty Harry. Mr. Taylor was just a guy protecting his house and his girlfriend. The way he sees it, when an alarm system and window locks fail to stop an intruder, you’ve got a dangerous criminal on your hands. “I did it for the right reasons,” he told me. The district attorney investigated the shooting and agreed. He told The Macon Telegraph this week that he wasn’t pressing charges because it was “crystal clear” that Mr. Taylor had behaved lawfully. There’s some good news for you. When I talked to him, Mr. Taylor said that what haunts him now is a weird feeling of unease. “Your home is your safety net … your comfort zone,” he said. “You never expect anyone to violate that.” The man who did was 42 years old and had been arrested just days before for pimping . He sported an array of tattoos, including one that read: Only God Can Judge Me. “How ironic is that?” Fred Taylor sighed. Very. Would have made a good headline, too. Reach Kerry at (757) 446-2306 or [email protected].

home.hamptonroads.com/stories/story.cfm?story=93005&ran=108264

Contrast this story with the case in England ,where the poor homeowner was IMPRISONED for the "crime" of defending his own life against the invader -- and then, after his sentence had been served, they KEPT him in prison even longer, because, they argued that if he was released, they feared that he might be a danger to burglars.

You can't make stuff like this up.

he regretted it? remorse? fuck remorse. I wouldn't have felt any remorse. I would have probably laughed after it was over......  anyhow, good shoot.

F'ing Bravo!!!  

I bet he thought he was going to have a date with the lady, he figured wrong, awesome.

F u anti-gunners.

Quoted: he regretted it? remorse? fuck remorse. I wouldn't have felt any remorse. I would have probably laughed after it was over......  anyhow, good shoot.

F'in A bob.  1 down many to go but we can do it.

Regret, whats to regret????? The fucking thug put you in the position to take the action that you did, it's the fucking thugs fault that you had to pull the trigger, it's the fuking thugs fault you had to endure all that you've had to endure. Got it? It's the thugs fault, not yours. No regrets, one less thug.


+1

"Now this young man and young woman will have a mental scar for life," Green said.

Oh, it's his lawyer... but it's still BS.  

It's the thug that has a scar that won't buff out.  Taylor and his girlfriend are doing fine.  They're alive and well.

Quoted: Contrast this story with the case in England ,where the poor homeowner was IMPRISONED for the "crime" of defending his own life against the invader -- and then, after his sentence had been served, they KEPT him in prison even longer, because, they argued that if he was released, they feared that he might be a danger to burglars. You can't make stuff like this up.

The Brits used to be tough. They used to rage across continents and rule the world's oceans. Now their own citizens can't even shoot bad guys in their own homes. Man, did they get sissified!

Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: I bet he gets "hero" sex for a month with his GF Here's to you bro Don't count on it. She'll probably have to enter therapy and dump him for "ruining her life". Yep.  I don't quite get why she is so scarred and broke down crying. She went and hid and called 911 like she was supposed to. Maybe I'm just callous, but I don't see it.

I'm glad I'm not the only one. Several things in the article regarding her attitude caught my eye.

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. <...> 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.

Ditch the bitch. All he's going to get from her now is a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth.