The recent arrest of four individuals for an alleged assault and carjacking at the St. George Walgreens raises a lot of questions. On Saturday, Aug. 29, Chelsey Taylor, David Davenport, Carl Fowlkes, and Patrick Joseph Bayles were arrested and booked into Purgatory Correctional Facility for charges ranging from burglary to assault, use of a weapon, and domestic violence. It has been reported by some press agencies that carjacking may be added to the list.
However, the car that was listed as carjacked was owned by, registered to, and being paid for by Chelsey Taylor. So how do you carjack your own car? If I called 911 to report my car as stolen and they asked who stole it, if I told them that I did, they would think that I was crazy. Furthermore, other details in this story seem to reveal that perhaps justice wasn’t served as equally as it should have been.
So let’s start at the beginning. As someone who has worked with Chelsey Taylor for the past nine years, I could give a lengthy backstory, but it’s probably one that you might have already guessed at and probably heard before.
A woman involved with an ex-con. Verbal and physical abuse which was never reported, followed by forgiveness, followed by more abuse—patterns characteristic of battered women’s syndrome.
Despite the abuse, they get married, and the husband usurps the wife’s possessions as if they are his own, even though the wife is paying most of the bills, including for a vehicle she needs to get to work. She feels like she would never get away from him, that he would never let her leave, and that he would stalk her and end up, in her words, “killing me.”
An unfortunately familiar story. And even if you didn’t hear about it in the news, you probably wouldn’t be surprised to hear what happened after Chelsey Taylor finally broke away, moving into a local motel.
Taylor and three of her male friends decided to take matters into their own hands. Taylor asked her abusive husband to meet her in the Walgreens parking lot on St.George Boulevard. The three friends met the husband there instead, took her vehicle and her belongings that were inside it, and assaulted the husband in the process.
St. George Police officers followed the vehicle to a local motel where Taylor was staying without her car, any clothes, or any of her belongings, all because of trying to escape an abusive man and her marriage to him. Taylor and the three men involved were arrested.
Again, this is a familiar story, and I’m not saying what she did was right. I realize that it wasn’t the best way to handle the situation, but at that point in time, the decisions were made in desperation. She needed transportation, and her job of nine years was in jeopardy.
However, a crime was committed and there need to be repercussions…for everyone. And here is where I get back to questioning how justice was doled out in the St. George Walgreens carjacking story and looking at what perhaps distinguishes this case from others on the nightly news.
St. George Police officers gave the vehicle back to the abusive husband without even checking to see if the car belonged to him. Nor did they check to see if he was legal to drive the car, which he wasn’t. He was driving Taylor’s car on a suspended or revoked license. If anything, the car should have been impounded, and he should have been taken to jail for driving illegally.
The four individuals—including Taylor—were taken to Purgatory Correctional Facility with bonds anywhere from $10,000 to $15,000 each. Taylor bailed out the next afternoon and was given a Jail Release Form stating that she could have no direct or indirect contact with the victim, her abusive husband. She was also forbidden by the court order not to go into the residence or be near where the “victim” is. If she violated the order, she was subject to a third-degree felony charge in addition to the other charges.
However, from the time she was released from jail on Aug. 30, the husband repeatedly called and texted Taylor, begging her to talk to or see him. He even showed up to attend her court hearing with no resulting consequences. So she has an order to not have any contact with her husband, but he can show up in court and basically make her violate her no-contact order, and nothing is done.
The abusive husband even returned the alleged carjacked, robbery-involved vehicle and the belongings inside to Taylor. I’m not in law enforcement, nor am I a judge or an attorney, but if four people carjacked your personal vehicle, committing robbery and assault in the process, why on earth would you drop off the vehicle and all the supposedly stolen possessions inside it to the person implicated as being the mastermind in the alleged crime?
Our court system is full. Our jails are overcrowded. The police are busy. It is all taxpayer money that is funding this ludicrous nonsense. I agree that Chelsey Taylor and her friends went about this the wrong way, but the abusive husband wasn’t the “victim.” The real victims in this case are the people who were arrested trying to help a friend get her vehicle back so that she would have transportation to work. She is the rightful owner. The four who were arrested have already spent upwards of $4,500 to be released from jail. They are facing additional attorney’s fees and possible fines. The real perpetrator in this crime, the soon-to-be ex-husband, has no charges and no jail time.
However, there may be some justice yet, even if it wasn’t handed down by our legal system. Currently the husband has nowhere to live and no car, only some clothing. Maybe the saying is true: “What goes around comes around.”
