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Two weeks ago, a Buena Vista woman was acquitted of an attempted murder charge, but was found guilty of four other charges, including child endangerment and maliciously discharging a firearm in an occupied dwelling.
Tracey Taylor, 47, stood trial in Buena Vista Circuit Court on March 29 on four felony charges – attempted seconddegree murder, use of a firearm in commission of a felony, child endangerment and maliciously discharging a firearm in an occupied dwelling – resulting from an incident that took place in her home on Walnut Avenue in the early morning hours of Dec. 4, 2022. She was also charged with two misdemeanors: brandishing a firearm and discharging a firearm within city limits.
In addition to the two felony convictions, Taylor was also found guilty of both misdemeanors.
The morning after the incident, Taylor went to the Buena Vista Police Department to report the incident and spoke to Detective Cameron Wheeler.
Wheeler testified that Taylor reported that she fired a shot at Paul Thompson, her on-again, off-again boyfriend. Wheeler then spoke to Thompson “to get his side of the story” and talked to other witnesses.
On Dec. 8, a search warrant was executed on Taylor’s home, and a .22 caliber pistol was recovered, along with a .22 caliber bullet imbedded inside a window casing at the house. The bullet had been fired down a hallway in the center of the house “at about chest height,” through an unoccupied bedroom and laundry room before ending up in the window casing.
Thompson testified that he had come to the house that night to retrieve his cell phone, which he said Taylor had taken from him earlier that day. He said he entered the house through the kitchen door, walked down the hall into the living room where Taylor, her daughter Maura Flint, and Torrie Austin, a friend of both Taylor and Thompson, were. Seeing his phone on the coffee table, he retrieved it and turned to leave.
“She said she was going to shoot me, so I said, ‘Okay, shoot me,’” Thompson said. He said he had just stepped out of the hallway and into the kitchen when the shot was fired.
Austin, who was called as a witness for the commonwealth, corroborated Thompson’s testimony that Taylor had his phone on the coffee table in the living room. She testified that Thompson and Taylor had gotten into an argument earlier in the day and that he said Taylor had ended up with his phone.
She testified that Thompson had come to the door of the living room entrance of the house at first, trying to get in to retrieve his phone. Taylor, she said, told him to go away and after he’d left, Taylor kept saying she could hear something outside and was going to check. Sometime after that, she said, Thompson “barged down the hallway” and into the living room. She testified that he did grab something off of the coffee table, and that he grabbed Taylor’s phone out of her hand.
“She said ‘Paul, get out of my house or I’m going to shoot you,’” Austin testified. “He kept saying, ‘Shoot me then.’” Thompson then left the room and Austin testified that, while she couldn’t see down the hall from where she was sitting, that she heard him rummaging through drawers in the kitchen. Taylor went to a gun safe located in the living room, retrieved a gun and fired it down the hall “in the direction Paul had gone.”
Austin also testified that after the incident, when she turned her phone on (it had been turned off while it was charging at Taylor’s house), she received a message from Taylor that had been sent between 8 and 10 the night before which read ‘[Paul’s] acting crazy. I’m going to shoot him.”
Flint testified about the incident as part of the defense’s case. She had fallen asleep on the couch in the living room that night, but woke up to the sound of raised voices, saying she recognized them as Thompson and her mother’s.
Thompson, she said, was “behaving very aggressively.” She also testified that she saw Thompson grab her mother’s phone and wallet from her hands and heard her mother say, “Get out, Paul,” at which point Thompson left the living room. Shortly afterward, she said she heard a “rattling” sound coming from the kitchen, like he was “going trough the drawers.”
“I was pretty scared,” she said. “What could he be rooting around in our drawers for?”
Shortly after that, she said, she heard the shot fired.
After her daughter testified, Taylor took the stand in her own defense. She acknowledged her relationship history with Thompson, saying that he continued to come to her house and that they would run into each other around town.
“He pops up every so often, like this time,” she said. “I keep trying to send him away.”
Throughout the day on Dec. 3, Taylor testified, Thompson “showed up every place [she] was at” when she was out running errands and that at one point she had driven him to his mom’s house, but he had come back to her place “around 6:30” asking her to take him to Roanoke. When she refused, Taylor said he hit her “over the head” with an arrow. She said she tried to call 9-1-1, but that Thompson took her phone away and “threw it onto the couch.”
She then ran out to her truck in an effort to get away. She said that Thompson got on the back of the truck, which she drove to the police department and parked on the street in front of the station, hoping an officer would come out to deal with the situation. When no officers came out, Taylor said she drove back to her house, ran inside and locked the door. Thompson left shortly after that, but later joined Taylor, Austin, and another friend for a trip to Food Lion. Following that, Taylor said she took Thompson to the home of Paul Lombard, a friend of his.
Taylor said she locked the door when she and Austin returned home for the evening, but that she kept hearing the screen door opening. Investigations of the noise didn’t reveal any signs of anyone, but she testified that the door was locked prior to Thompson entering the house and the confrontation that resulted in her firing the shot.
After Thompson left the living room, Taylor said she heard him going through drawers in the kitchen, also testifying that she had a sword in the kitchen. Worried he was looking for a weapon, Taylor retrieved the gun from the gun safe, walked to the hallway and fired one shot toward the kitchen. She said she fired the gun with her left hand – later clarifying that she’s righthanded – and that Thompson wasn’t in the hallway when she fired.
“My intention was for him to leave,” she said. “I had no intention of shooting Paul. I was protecting my home, my daughter, and my guest.”
In his cross-examination, Buena Vista Commonwealth’s Attorney Joshua Elrod asked Taylor about several assault and larceny charges she had filed against Thompson since May of 2021 and why she had continued to give him rides to places or hire him for jobs around her house, such as in December of 2021 when she hired him to wire up her hot tub. Taylor said she hired Thompson because “he does good work,” though she later accused Thompson of stealing wire from the job.
Taylor also expressed resentment that Thompson was being treated as the victim.
“I don’t understand that,” she said. “There were three women in that house and he broke in.”
In his closing arguments, Elrod asked the jury to consider the details of the case, the fact that no one knew for sure where Thompson was in the house when the shot was fired, and the history of the relationship between Taylor and Thompson.
“This was a dangerous thing, and the situation was allowed to escalate,” he said. “Of course people can defend themselves in their own homes, but … individuals cannot allow a domestic dispute to escalate to the point of violence and then claim innocence.”
Taylor’s defense attorney Daniel Mowry cited the Castle Doctrine, which allows the use of force or violence when defending one’s home, as the argument against the charges, especially the attempted murder charge.
“That home is Ms. Taylor’s castle,” he said. “She was scared that she had been confronted by a 6-foot-tall man. Ms. Taylor observed what she perceived to be a threat and had to find a way to defend herself.”
After an hour of deliberation, the jury returned a verdict of not guilty for the attempted murder charge, as well as the charge of using a firearm in the commission of a felony. Taylor was found guilty of two other felonies: child endangerment and maliciously discharging a firearm in an occupied dwelling. She was also convicted on the misdemeanor charges of brandishing a firearm and discharging a firearm in the city of Buena Vista.
A sentencing hearing is scheduled for April 27 at 2 p.m.
