Confusion surrounds life, death of football player shot by police

ARLINGTON, Texas -- The dreams, filled with vivid images, began a month ago, maybe two. The visions, as he described them, set Christian James Taylor's soul on fire for Jesus Christ.

Taylor, "CJ" to friends and family, grew up in a religious home in which folks joined hands each night at 9 p.m. so his daddy could deliver a prayer of protection. Taylor was the youngest of three football-playing brothers. The oldest, Adrian, played at Oklahoma and spent a brief time on the Seattle Seahawks' roster.

Once the visions started, Taylor's passion for football and Air Jordans shifted to God.

"You gotta know the Lord," Taylor told friends and strangers in the weeks before his death. "You gotta come to church with me. I'll do anything if you'll just come to church."

In the past month, the 19-year-old redshirt freshman defensive back at Angelo State University started believing tomorrow was not promised to him. He sent multiple text messages to Dr. Ronnie Goines, his pastor at Arlington's Koinonia Christian Church, that indicated he believed he would die soon.

"He had this profound sense that he was going to die," Goines said. "He'd say, 'Pastor, I gotta get this word out before I die. I have to help young people. Pastor, I don't want to die before I get this word out.' He may have said that three or four times."

Taylor became obsessed with changing the world before he left it. In death, he might have achieved his goal.

His death, almost exactly one year after Michael Brown was killed in Ferguson, Missouri, has reignited the national discussion about the use of deadly force by police. Perhaps Taylor's shooting will be a catalyst for reform that leads to fewer young, African-American men being killed by law enforcement.

"It's hard because you see someone change their life, better everyone around them and try to change the world one day," said J'Von Varra, a friend of Taylor's since the seventh grade.

"You're thinking he's just talking and he'd say, 'I'm gonna show y'all.' I hate the fact he had to be sacrificed, but maybe this is the way God wanted it to be."

Arlington police officer Brad Miller shot Taylor, who was unarmed, multiple times shortly after 1 a.m. Friday, Aug. 7, after Miller and five other officers responded to a burglary call at a local car dealership. Surveillance video shows Taylor destroying property before police arrived. Miller, a rookie officer who hadn't yet completed his field-training program, was fired Tuesday and remains subject to criminal charges.

"This is an extraordinarily difficult case," Arlington police chief Will Johnson said when announcing Miller's dismissal. "Decisions were made that have catastrophic outcomes."

Taylor's funeral is scheduled for Saturday afternoon at Koinonia.

Jearld McGlothin says he spoke to his cousin for a few minutes on the phone at 12:45 Friday morning, but the conversation contained nothing unusual.

"I love you," Taylor told McGlothin as he prepared to hang up.

"I love you, too. Always," McGlothin replied.

"I'm going to come get you tomorrow," Taylor said. "If not, I'll see you later."

"See you later," McGlothin said. Then he hung up.

Soon after McGlothin talked to his cousin for the last time, Taylor was captured on video arriving at Classic Buick GMC, where, after wandering through the lot, he smashed a car's windshield before driving his SUV through the showroom's glass wall. There is no video of the shooting, which occurred inside the dealership. Police say Taylor was defiant when confronted by Miller and moved toward the officer even after being shot the first time.

"I woke up to all that news, and I really didn't know how to swallow that," McGlothin said. "I'm still trying to get it together."

He's not alone.

Taylor belonged to a large, tight-knit group of friends, most of whom have known one another since middle school. They played football together at Summit High School in nearby Mansfield and several played on an AAU basketball team coached by Rodney McHenry, whose son Jordan has been friends with Taylor since the eighth grade.

Some of Taylor's friends have survivor guilt now as they search their memories for clues as to why their friend, the dude who was forever encouraging them to do better, is about to have a celebration of his life.

"It was kind of weird for us, when he started talking about God so much," Jordan McHenry said. "We really just wanted to check with him and make sure he was OK. Was anything going on with him mentally? Was he depressed? Or was it something to do with football at Angelo State?

"What made him make this dramatic change? He just said it was God's will and he's feeding us what God told him to do. He felt like he had to do whatever he had to do to make an impact in the world."

Sam Armardi, Taylor's friend since the ninth grade, has been studying old text messages for hints to what triggered Taylor's personality change. Armardi said he was serving a 25-day jail sentence when Taylor went through his metamorphosis.

Soon after Armardi returned to Arlington, a large suburb between Dallas and Fort Worth, he and Taylor spent an afternoon walking around Stovall Park, talking about life.

"Christian told me he felt Him, and it was making him smile, making him dance and making him scream and shout for Jesus," Armardi said. "He said one day he woke up and decided to change."

Many in Taylor's group of friends are in college; others have jobs. Social media and FaceTime conversations make it easy to stay in touch. They've used a group text message to communicate for years, although this week they're congregating to share memories.

Taylor's desire to please God meant he didn't have much time to hang around his friends when he wasn't in San Angelo training for the upcoming football season. A teen leadership class in high school introduced Taylor to the concept of "paying it forward," and it's something he enjoyed doing whether it was buying a stranger lunch at Sonic or regularly dropping off clothes and shoes at a homeless shelter.

"The dreams and the visions he had were very vivid," Varra said. "It was very clear to him what he wanted to do and why he was sent here.

"We knew he changed for the better, but it was hard -- not because he changed, but because he was always going to help people, so we didn't see him as much as we used to."

For now, no answers exist to ease his friends' grief. When the toxicology report is released, they pray it will provide some answers as to what caused Taylor's strange behavior the night he died. Otherwise, the reasons for his actions during the final half-hour of his life will remain a mystery.

Talk to folks at Summit High School and they'll tell you the same thing as parishioners at Koinonia, which is no different than what his teammates and coaches at Angelo State say. Folks loved this kid's effervescent personality and his passion for life.

He's the guy who made you smile when you were mad. He's the guy who persuaded you to do one more rep or set when your aching muscles demanded rest. And he's the guy who could turn a lame party into a night to remember.

"Christian had certain friends that weren't doing nothing and certain friends going to college," Goines, the pastor, said. "He functioned in both worlds. His friends who weren't doing anything respected him, and his friends that were doing stuff respected him.

"I would be stepping out of his bounds to pretend I knew everything he did when I wasn't around. When I was around him I saw a passionate kid who loved life but sensed something was about to happen to him."

On the Wednesday before Taylor's death, someone sent a text to the group with a sad emoji indicating the person's mood. Taylor texted, "Mine too." The next day, Taylor removed himself from the group message, which had 14 members.

"We saw him leave [the group] and we wondered what was going on," Armardi said. "We were curious, but we didn't think it was gonna be the same day all this evil stuff was going to happen."

McHenry last saw Taylor about 8 p.m. Thursday sitting on his gray Jeep SUV, relaxing.

"We were coming home to get something to eat," said McHenry, who was with another mutual friend. "He was just sitting on his car, and I thought he was going to come talk to us. When we went outside about 20 minutes later, he was gone."

The campus at Angelo State is largely empty these days and the bicycle racks outside the student union are barren because school doesn't start until Aug. 20.

Still, a few students held a candlelight vigil Saturday night to honor Taylor's memory. Many more students tweeted their condolences to his family.

"Heart is hurting," tweeted football coach Will Wagner.

Taylor played well in Angelo State's spring game, intercepting two passes and putting himself in a position to challenge for a starting job. While he enjoyed football, his new perspective on life made him view any success on the field as an opportunity to have a bigger platform to tell strangers about Jesus.

Fredrick Williams II, a barber at Southside Kutz less than a mile from the Angelo State campus, said there hasn't been much conversation at the one-chair shop about Taylor's death because school hasn't started. Some of his regular customers, a group that includes a mix of football and basketball players, can't figure out how their friend wound up dead.

"He may have come in here one or two times, but he wasn't a regular customer," Williams said Monday. "There's a lot of doubt and confusion when people talk about it. It's all just kind of weird, and we're really waiting to hear what happened.

"He wasn't the kind of guy you would expect to be in that situation. I talked to [an Angelo State football player] this morning and he told me that Taylor slept on his couch all summer and he couldn't believe he was gone."

The football team is on campus preparing for its season. They players met Monday afternoon to discuss Taylor's death as a team for the first time.

"He could make joy come to anybody," running back Ryan Byrd said. "He was just the most down-to-earth person."

As for the circumstances surrounding Taylor's death, Byrd said, "I'm not even gonna lie to you, I don't even want to talk about it. It's been a hard time."