They were three men living in a Baltimore drug and alcohol recovery house, just trying to pull their lives back together. But their attempts at redemption were cutshort in 2005, when they were shot to death over a $125 debt.
“These three men were shot execution-style,” Baltimore City Assistant State?s Attorney Donald Giblin said during opening arguments in the triple-murder trial of Derrick Taylor. “… Even in a city with a traditionally high murder rate, a triple murder gets a lot of attention.”
Charging documents allege that on Jan. 10, 2005, Taylor , 27, and his co-defendant Corey McMillon, 29, shot and killed Nathan Gulliver, 49, Antwon Arthur, 38, and Steven Matthews, 36, at a drug and alcohol recovery house in the 540 block of West 27th Street.
Taylor and McMillon are being tried separately. McMillon is already serving a life sentence for a previous murder conviction.
Giblin told the jury that Taylor was angry at Arthur because of money owed to him and his girlfriend, Lisa Owens.
When Taylor and McMillon went to the recovery house in search of the $125 Arthur owed Taylor, Gulliver offered to help out his friend by going to an ATM and withdrawing the money, Giblin said.
But even after Gulliver gave Taylor the very last dollars in his account, Taylor and McMillon still decided to kill the men, shooting them at point-blank range, prosecutors said.
“He put the gun to Antwon?s head and blew his brains out,” Giblin said.
Another man at the recovery house, Shawn Brown, was able to flee the killing scene by jumping from a second-story window,despite being shot three times, Giblin said.
Brown, who identified Taylor as the gunman, got a clear look at him for nearly 40 minutes before the encounter at the recovery house turned violent, prosecutors said. Taylor?s girlfriend, Owens, has pleaded guilty to a drug crime in the case and is scheduled to testify against him.
Taylor?s attorney, Sharon May, attempted to poke holes in prosecutors? argument, saying investigators found no physical evidence of Taylor at the scene. She said Brown was being medicated for the pain of his bullet wounds when he identified Taylor.
“Nothing at the scene belongs to Derrick Taylor,” she said.
Taylor remains held without bail at the Baltimore City Detention Center.
