Further inquiry sought in Taggart death
Nina Taggart, with the assistance of the local chapter of the NAACP, has asked the Arkansas State Police to take over the investigation into the death of her son, Maurice Taggart, because she has lost faith in the Pine Bluff Police Department to solve the case.
In a letter dated today, Nina Taggart wrote to Col. Mike Hagar, head of the State Police, saying she was asking for the department’s help concerning her son’s case.
“I am requesting an Arkansas State Police investigation of this incident because I no longer trust the local Pine Bluff Police Department to investigate my son’s murder,” she wrote. “… I trusted the Pine Bluff Police Department to conduct a thorough and proper investigation and to tell the truth about what they found. I do not believe that occurred.”
In a separate letter to the NAACP dated Oct. 12, Nina Taggart asked for the group’s help “in receiving justice for my son.”
“What many of you did not know, and I did not know until the newspaper came out last Sunday, was the suspicious circumstances and botched investigation of his death,” she wrote.
Nina Taggart then listed several details, which were first reported by The Commercial, such as eyewitness accounts and the fact that Maurice Taggart had been shot in the back, shedding doubt on the police department’s report that he died while struggling over a gun with his son.
“None of these things make any sense to me,” she wrote in the letter to the NAACP. “I need your help to get justice for my son. I don’t trust the Pine Bluff Police Department to do this anymore. I want the NAACP to help me get a full and fair investigation by the Arkansas State Police into what happened on the night my son died. I need help to get Justice for Maurice.”
In its own statement, issued Tuesday, the NAACP said the request from Nina Taggart was voted on by the group’s executive committee and the general membership, both of which agreed unanimously
to offer whatever assistance it could to her.
Under a section titled “Policy Questions and Changes Demanded,” the group, referencing various facets of the murder case, asked if it was proper or fair to close a homicide crime scene in less than an hour or for Police Chief Denise Richardson to declare on the radio the day after the killing that key decisions had already been reached in the case or for certain people who were said to be at the scene to be left out of the police report.
“The grieving mother and the Pine Bluff community want to know what really happened to Maurice Taggart and why/who is covering it up,” stated the news release. “We want Justice for Maurice.”
The NAACP also called the Pine Bluff investigation “botched” and said there was a “possible police cover-up.”
Original reports released by the police department stated police went to 1 Hillcroft St., located near the Pine Bluff Country Club, because of a shooting. When they arrived around 2 a.m. on Aug. 30 they found that two men had been shot, 43-year-old Maurice Taggart and his son, 26-year-old Justice Taggart. Both were taken to Jefferson Regional Medical Center where Maurice Taggart died from his injuries, and Justice Taggart survived.
“During the altercation both Taggarts fought over a pistol resulting in them shooting each other,” Lt. David DeFoor stated in a news release sent at 5:35 a.m. on the day of the shooting.
The Commercial, however, reported in October that Maurice Taggart was shot twice, once in the back and once in the upper shoulder, according to a source who was familiar with a state medical examiner’s report, and that there may have been an exit wound.
“Why did the police chief say that no one would be arrested and no one would be charged on the radio?” asked Nina Taggart in her letter to the NAACP.
Richardson said in her only interview about the case on Aug. 31 that Justice Taggart, who was said to have been shot in the altercation, would not be charged in the incident. Richardson also said police believed Justice Taggart was not the instigator of the incident. At the time of her statement, Maurice Taggart’s body had not yet been transferred to the state Crime Lab.
The police report on the incident from Officer John Woods said that when he arrived at the Taggart house, he spoke to Maurice Taggart’s wife, Shawndra Taggart, who is the Jefferson County clerk. Woods said she told him that her husband had gotten into a fight with her son and that her husband had shot her son.
The Commercial released the 911 recordings of the incident revealing the tense moments that took place during and after Maurice Taggart’s fatal shooting.
Eyewitnesses interviewed by The Commercial also painted a different picture from the original report given by the police department.
One witness stated they “heard a gunshot, heard arguing and saw some people behind Maurice Taggart’s house fighting near the carport in a physical confrontation followed by more gunshots that slowed the fight down, separating the group from one another.
“I didn’t realize Maurice was [mortally] wounded at the time,” said the eyewitness. “He didn’t appear to be in distress. I was shocked when he died.”
The witness stated they never saw a gun in the hands of the people who were fighting and did not know where the gunshots came from.
“They were actively fighting when the shots occurred,” said the witness.
Witness statements also suggested that Maurice Taggart did not die immediately.
“He appeared wounded, but he didn’t look like he was dying,” said a witness. “He was just kind of sitting there on the steps afterward … [after the gunshots were heard by the witness]. He walked up on the patio … and he sat down on the steps.”
A witness stated the fighting involved more than two people and that there was a concern that the video cameras weren’t working.
Another witness said they saw a third unnamed individual with “no shirt on with shorts running around” who later disappeared, and they described the scene of the aftermath as appearing “chaotic” as onlookers observed from a distance.
Efforts to reach Chief Richardson for this story were unsuccessful.
Prosecuting attorney Kyle Hunter, who has had the police department’s murder investigation file in his possession since late September, told The Commercial that the Maurice Taggart killing was still under investigation and while he didn’t have a time frame on when the case would be completed, he did say he would release a statement once it is complete.
Mayor Shirley Washington said it was important to reserve comments until the investigation is complete.
“My prayers are with the family members and our commitment to the community in providing the most thorough investigation possible,” said Washington.
Maurice Taggart was the subject of a State Police investigation with his trial set for March 2024. In early June, Taggart and Roderick Morris of Texas were charged with 46 counts of forgery and 38 counts of theft of property in a scheme that officials said bilked the Urban Renewal Agency out of $667,384 by submitting fake invoices for asbestos testing and house demolitions that prosecutors claimed never happened. Taggart had been the executive director of the agency for four years but had left the job in 2021 to pursue a career as a lawyer.
When contacted by The Commercial about the charges, Maurice Taggart declined to comment on the record, but several conversations with him that were recorded by the newspaper with his permission, later titled Maurice Taggart: The Final Say, were released recently by the newspaper, which also published several text messages and a letter to the editor from him.
“You can rest assured, them sons of b***hes are not through with me. They’re trying to bury my ass. They ain’t through with me. I guarantee it. I know how they operate. They are going to use influence,” Maurice Taggart said at one point during the conversations with the newspaper.
“I know that if a federal witness was killed during a federal investigation that there would be an additional investigation by federal authorities into that untimely death,” said Nina Taggart in her letter addressed to the State Police’s Hagar. “I assume that if a state witness is killed during a state investigation, there should be an additional investigation by the state police into the death, which is what we are asking for now.”
Nina Taggart said when she listened to “The Final Say” and heard her son’s voice, “it was as if Maurice was speaking from the grave. … He had been involved in something much larger than him, and I want to get to the bottom of it.”
It was also noted by the NAACP that Nina Taggart now joins a group of African American women in the United States whose children have been affected by police or gun violence. The group, called The Mothers of the Movement, includes seven women connected by tragedy.
“I never dreamed I might qualify to become a member of this exclusive but sorrowful club,” Nina Taggart wrote in her letter to Hagar.