On the evening of April 7, 2021 in Charleston, West Virginia, 18 year old athlete Kelvin Taylor was shot outside of Sali’s on Central Avenue in a drive-by shooting. He died of one gunshot to the chest.
Police arrived and canvassed the crime scene. They found bullet fragments through the window of the store which told them the shooting came from Central Avenue. So they immediately began canvassing Central Avenue for CCTV footage from the businesses along the street. Across the street from Sali’s, CCTV footage showed the entire murder. KJ arrived as a passenger on the motorcycle of a friend who dropped him off then drove down the sidewalk and parked. As KJ walked around the corner toward his friend, a gray and silver pickup drove by shooting and killed KJ.
From speaking to KJ’s friends, they discover he was playing basketball two blocks away at the Second Avenue Center. CCTV shows the shooter’s striped gray and silver pickup passing KJ and his friends on their motorcycles right before they took off toward Sali’s. That pickup turned around and followed them.
Police canvas the neighborhood around the Second Avenue Center looking for more cameras and more CCTV footage. They hit the jackpot at a house down the street. On the CCTV footage is a Ford F-150 gray and silver, step side pickup with a West Virginia license plate driving down toward KJ.
Police release the video of the pickup to the media. The first tip is a voicemail message from the previous owner of that pickup. He gives them the name and address of the new owner, but when the police stake out that home, it proves fruitless. There’s no shooter, no pickup.
The second tip is from someone who tells the police the pickup is parked between two trailers on Hawes Drive. Police find the pickup, seize it, and get a search warrant to search it for DNA, fingerprints, and other forensic evidence.
The third tip is from someone who tells them that pickup belongs to a guy named Dekotis. Police are very familiar with Dekotis Thomas who has a long rap sheet for violent crimes. His name has come up in the investigation several times already..
Police take the VIN number of the pickup down and run it. It comes back with an oil change on the day of the murder. So they go to the oil change place and watch their CCTV. The pickup getting the oil change is the same, so are the driver and passenger. They’re wearing the identical clothing as during the shooting seen in the CCTV footage. The CCTV of the driver is very clear. It’s Dekotis Thomas. The receipt shows they were there at 2:30 pm of the day of the murder.
Police get a search warrant for Dekotis Thomas’s trailer in Poker, Putnam County. There they find a red hooded sweatshirt with a burn in it from a hot bullet casing. But Dekotis is not there.
Police find a burn mark in the passenger side of the pickup that lines up perfectly with the red hooded sweatshirt found in Dekotis’s home. It’s the same shirt worn by the passenger and proves the driver was shooting, not the passenger. There is also bullet damage on the passenger door inside right near the passenger’s head. So Dekotis almost shot his passenger as well.
Police get a warrant to ping Dekotis’s cell phone. It shows he fled after the murder to Ohio.
Months go by and suddenly it’s August. Police get a tip that Dekotis has moved to Akron, Ohio and is staying with friends. US Marshals are given a warrant to arrest him. They go to Akron and approach the house. Dekotis barricades himself inside the house and throws Molotov cocktails at the police outside. One of those drops inside by mistake and sets the house ablaze. Dekotis, who has barricaded himself inside, is trapped and climbs onto the roof. The fire department rescues him and hands him over to the US Marshals. He’s brought back to Charleston, West Virginia to stand trial.
On Dec 2, 2022, Dekotis Thomas is sentenced to life without parole. He claims he was trying to shoot KJ’s friend over a disagreement.
Afterward, the street where KJ grew up is renamed to KJ Taylor Lane in his memory.
Bibliography
See No Evil, Season 12, Episode 1: Fallen Star.
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