One of the duties of the Albemarle County Commonwealth’s Attorney is to investigate when there is a shooting involving a law enforcement officer.
On August 23, 2024, the office issued a report concluding that a Waynesboro police officer was justified in the shooting death of Kevin David Taylor II on I-64 on April 10 of this year.
“Taylor was a suspect in a shots fire / malicious wounding call in Waynesboro, and he eventually came to a stop on the shoulder of I-64 in Albemarle County when his vehicle wrecked,” reads a summary of the incident. “The Waynesboro police got out of their vehicles with Taylor’s vehicle was stopped.”
According to the summary, Taylor asked several times to be shot. Virginia State Police and Albemarle County Police soon arrived and efforts were made to connect Taylor with his mother on the phone to ease the situation.
Taylor said he had a gun and an hour into the incident, police fired a “less than lethal” foam baton. (see an example)
“Taylor dove into his car, and a Waynesboro law enforcement officer fired seven rounds into Taylor’s car, killing him,” the summary concludes.
The full report includes more details of the incident including the presence of a K-9 officer that made Taylor uncomfortable. The two paragraph conclusion finds no criminal liability against the officer who is identified by the initials R.B.
“While Taylor’s death under these circumstances is tragic and regrettable, it must be noted that law enforcement spent nearly an hour attempting to de-escalate the situation and safely apprehend Taylor, while Taylor tried again and again to create a situation in which the officer had no choice but to shoot him to protect themselves and others,” reads the final line of the three page public report.
Virginia law requires records to be kept of officer-involved shootings and for that record to be published in the annual Crime in Virginia report. These are released by calendar year. In 2023 22 people were killed and 18 people were injured. All of the incidents that had been resolved by publication of the report were determined to be justified.
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