GARSON TAYLOR
MOUNDSVILLE — During the second day of Benwood Fire Chief Garson Taylor’s trial, prosecution called upon state and county police officers to share their accounts of the standoff with Taylor while defense used expert testimony to question Taylor’s strangulation charge against ex-wife Taylor Hebb.
On top of the strangulation charge, Taylor faces charges of wanton endangerment with a firearm, domestic battery, fleeing in a vehicle from an officer and obstructing an officer.
The first officer called as a witness on Thursday was Sergeant Steven Durrah of the West Virginia State Police, whose body camera footage of the standoff was played for the jury.
Assistant Prosecuting Attorney Brent Clyburn had Durrah explain why he had his gun pointed at Taylor’s truck in the footage. Durrah described taking this “defensive position” because Taylor was “present with a gun at the scene.”
Clyburn pointed out that in the footage a state trooper can be heard saying, “Everyone had a right to shoot Taylor.” Durrah confirmed for the attorney to be a “true assessment of the situation at that point.”
On why he didn’t fire at Taylor during the standoff, Durrah explained that “no one at the scene wanted to kill anyone,” along with the confrontation being near the busy W.Va. 2 highway.
“You went through great length in this scene to keep him alive,” said Clyburn. “You had every right to shoot him here, and you didn’t?”
Durrah agreed this was true.
In his cross-examination, defense attorney Robert McCoid pointed out that Durrah never witnessed Taylor point a gun at officers, which the officer confirmed.
“If he had pointed a gun at officers he would be dead?” asked McCoid, to which Durrah responded, “Possibly.”
When asked whether Taylor ever threatened officers, Durrah explained to McCoid that “at some point, he made some statements that were threatening.”
When McCoid pressed him on this answer, Durrah was not able to recall a specific instance in the video when he said something threatening.
McCoid asked if it was “very possible” Durrah could be remembering something said from another officer’s body cam footage he watched after the standoff, which the sergeant agreed with.
The next officer on the stand was Chief Robert Schilling of the McMechen Police Department, who also had his gun pointed at Taylor during the standoff. When asked by Marshall County Prosecutor Joe Canestraro why he did this, Schilling explained “did not know what Taylor had in the vehicle that could be a threat.”
Schilling confirmed for McCoid in the cross-examination that Taylor never threatened him with a gun.
Moving on to how Taylor used the gun during the interaction, McCoid asked Schilling whether he believed Taylor was going to shoot himself during the standoff. Schilling responded that he “could not answer what his perception was” regarding this matter.
McCoid called attention to the fact that during the preliminary hearing for the trial, Schilling’s answer to whether Taylor was going to take his life in May was “yes.”
The defense’s first witness called was Forensic Nursing Consultant Tristan Wristen, who explained that the evidence she had reviewed from the altercation of Taylor and Hebb was “not consistent” with the allegations of strangulation.
Wristen believed that Hebb was not strangled due to her never sustaining a loss of consciousness and because the red splotches left on Hebb’s neck after the altercation were also present in “different areas and seen on the face.”
“It’s not typical to see handprints per se, but you would see redness in areas of an application of pressure, specifically, to the sides of the neck,” explained Wristen. “The redness on her neck appears to be due to a more reactive type of skin having a reaction to what could be various causes, including stress.”
During the prosecution’s cross-examination, Canestraro had Wristen confirm that she had never personally examined Hebb and had no firsthand knowledge of what happened in that house.
The trial is scheduled to continue on Monday with jury deliberation expected to begin, according to 2nd Judicial Circuit Court Judge Charles Wilson.
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