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College football player killed by officer in North Texas.
An unarmed college football player was shot dead by a police officer during a middle-of-the-night burglary call at a North Texas car dealership — raising some of the same concerns as in other recent police shootings involving unarmed African-American suspects.
Arlington police officer Brad Miller, a 49-year-old police trainee, shot 19-yearold Christian Taylor about 1:20 a.m. Friday after officers responded to a burglar alarm at Classic Buick GMC in Arlington, police said. Police were advised that someone had driven a car onto the lot, started to damage another car, then drove his own vehicle into the glass front of the showroom.
Miller and another officer found Taylor “freely roaming” inside the dealership. After Taylor tried to escape from another side of the building, the other officer used his Taser and Miller fired four rounds with his service weapon, said Arlington Police Chief Will Johnson at a news
conference late Saturday.
This shooting happened the day before Sunday’s anniversary of the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., an unarmed, black 18-year-old whose death galvanized the “Black Lives Matter” movement and sparked protests that at times turned violent.
Johnson mentioned the current climate during the news conference, noting that “our nation has been wrestling with the topics of social injustice, inequities, racism and police misconduct” and that his department would “pledge to act in a transparent manner.”
A special FBI agent in charge of the Dallas field office will take part in the investigation into Taylor’s death both as a possible criminal case and to determine whether department rules were broken.
Miller has been with the Arlington Police Department since September and graduated from the police academy in March, police said. He had no commendation or discipline record at the department.
Although he had completed the police academy and was a fully licensed officer, he was still completing a 16-week fieldtraining program required of new officers, Sgt. Paul Rodriguez said. His training officer was with him at the time of the shooting, Rodriguez said.
After the shooting, Miller was placed on administrative leave, Rodriguez said.
“That’s standard across the board for us for anybody involved in a deadly force situation,” he said. Video reviewed
Investigators reviewed video footage from the dealership’s security cameras but have found no footage of the shooting, police said. Arlington police officers don’t wear body cameras, police said, though the department is implementing a pilot program.
Taylor was a defensive back on the Angelo State University football team, according to the team’s roster, where he was listed as a 5-foot-9, 180-pound freshman. He had two interceptions in the West Texas school’s spring game in February.
In December, Taylor was sentenced to six months deferred adjudication for possession of a controlled substance, a misdemeanor, according to court records. The charge was dismissed when he completed probation, according to the records.
A little more than a week before his death, Taylor, a 2014 graduate of Mansfield Summit High
“He had a lot of personality, a little charmer.” Travis Pride, football coach at Mansfield Summit High School
School, tweeted “I don’t wanna die too younggggg.” He also had tweeted concerns about police brutality in the past.
Angelo State coach Will Wagner said in a tweet, “Heart is hurting.”
His father, Adrian Taylor, told KTVT/Channel 11 that his son was “just a good dude” who would give the shoes off his feet to someone in need.
He said that he didn’t know why his son would have been at the car dealership at that time of night but that he shouldn’t have been killed.
“You know, it could have been too much drinking, he could have been at the wrong place at the wrong time, he could have gotten something and he didn’t know what he was getting,” Adrian Taylor said.
Travis Pride, Taylor’s coach at Mansfield Summit, said he talked with him Thursday, when the teen visited Summit to work out with Pride’s current players. They spoke about his future in San Angelo, where Taylor was slated to return Sunday.
“He told me that he thought he’d have an opportunity to start,” Pride said. “He was ready to get back. He loved the coaches, loved the program. All signs were pointed to go, for him to go get things done.” ‘It’s crazy’
Pride said that Taylor was a “fun-loving prankster, a jokester.”
“He had a lot of personality, a little charmer,” Pride said. “He had that working for him; he had all the administrative assistants and secretaries eating out of his hand.”
Jayci Korus, a student at Angelo State, said she met Taylor last summer and the two became friends. She said he tried to help everyone he met and “touched people’s lives daily.”
“His spirit could touch your heart,” she said. “Because of him I’m doing better for me.”
While other friends took to social media to remember Taylor, Korus said his death has shocked the campus.
“It’s crazy,” she said. “Our town is torn right now.”