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Witness: Racist remarks preceded rampage
Friday, November 02, 2001 By Jim McKinnon and Lillian Thomas, Post-Gazette Staff Writers
Ronald Taylor's rampage that killed three white men and wounded two others began with a racially charged confrontation with a maintenance worker, the worker testified yesterday.
John DeWitt said he was fixing Taylor's apartment door when Taylor berated him as a "racist white pig" and "dirty white trash."
Taylor later set the apartment on fire, grabbed a gun and came out looking for DeWitt, who had moved on to another maintenance job.
So Taylor found other targets.
As Taylor's homicide trial began yesterday, a Common Pleas Court jury heard from DeWitt and a co-worker.
Anthony Williams described how Taylor's first victim, John Kroll, collapsed into his arms after Taylor whirled and shot him on a stairway of the apartment building in Wilkinsburg.
Jurors also heard prosecutor Edward Borkowski describe Taylor's rampage as a "product of hatred," while defense lawyer John Elash said his client was "severely, severely [mentally] ill" at the time.
Taylor, 41, who is black, is charged with three counts of homicide, nine counts of aggravated assault and numerous related offenses in a rampage authorities contend was motivated by racism.
He could face the death penalty if convicted of first-degree murder for any of the killings.
After opening statements in the courtroom of Judge Lawrence J. O'Toole, DeWitt and Williams gave their versions of the events of March 1, 2000.
DeWitt and Kroll were repairing the door to Taylor's fifth-floor unit at Woodside Garden Apartments on Wood Street that morning, broken because Taylor had lost his key and kicked the door and jimmied the lock to get it open. Williams arrived later and helped on the project.
DeWitt, 64, of Hampton, testified that he and Taylor had a tense relationship that blew up that day when Taylor began berating him as he worked.
At one point DeWitt told Taylor to shut up, and at another picked up a hammer because he felt threatened by Taylor, he testified.
Kroll was not involved in the exchange, DeWitt testified. Kroll was "one of the nicest men I ever knew," he said tearfully.
As he, Kroll and Williams were downstairs cleaning up after the project, DeWitt remembered that another tenant had called for him to unlock a door and left.
Taylor confronted Kroll and Williams in the parking lot of the apartment building, Williams testified.
Taylor had his hand inside a bag, holding what turned out to be a pistol. He asked where DeWitt was, and called out to him: "Where you at [expletive]? I got something for you!"
"I asked him not to do anything wrong. We begged and pleaded with him," Williams testified, saying that he offered to call the manager so that Taylor could make a complaint about DeWitt.
The confrontation moved to a doorway. Taylor suddenly whirled in the doorway, Williams said. "I heard a pop, and [Kroll] just flew into me." He said he caught the collapsing Kroll and backpedaled, pulling him to his truck to rush him to a hospital.
After Kroll, 55, of Cabot, Butler County, was fatally wounded, Taylor walked into the Wilkinsburg business district, where witnesses have said he shot and killed Joseph Healy, 71, of Wilkinsburg, and Emil Sanielevici, 20, of Greenfield. Taylor also shot Richard Clinger, 57, of North Huntingdon, and Steve Bostard, 26, of Swissvale. Both survived.
Testimony about the other shootings is expected as the case continues today.
Taylor ended up in the former Columbia Hospital building on Penn Avenue, holding three white women hostage, before Allegheny County police detectives and local police persuaded him to surrender.
Elash told the jury of six men and six women during his opening statement that he and Taylor are not denying that the shootings occurred, only that Taylor was not mentally responsible.
"There's no diminishing the [victims' and survivors'] pain and their suffering," Elash said.
But he cautioned jurors not to succumb to social pressure or a "knee-jerk" reaction. He said they should wait and see whether prosecutors prove the slayings were premeditated and whether the defense can show that Taylor was mentally ill, then and now.
"Mental illness exists," Elash said. "You don't see it. It's not like a broken bone. But it is real. Anybody that's examined Ron Taylor for more than a half hour ... has made the determination that he is severely, severely ill."
Borkowski quickly attacked the insanity defense in his opening statement.
"What happened on March 1 when Ronald Taylor shot five people -- he killed three people -- was not the product of insanity. It was the product of hatred," he said.
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