Widow's children help her cope

JuWanna Taylor, widow of slain Massillon Patrolman Eric B. Taylor, is finding the strength to cope from the most precious gifts her husband gave her: their two young children.

``My children are what have kept me going,'' Taylor said Tuesday at the family's home in Massillon. ``You have to put you on the back burner. They need their mother.''

Taylor, 31, said she has tried to keep her children, Ty, 2, and Lauren, 1, as close to their regular daily schedules as possible since her husband was shot and killed Friday night while on duty. Eric Taylor, 31, joined the Massillon department in 1998.

``He's usually here,'' she said. ``Now, Mom's here instead of Dad. I've just tried to keep them in as much of a routine as possible.''

The routine for the household saw Tuesdays as Dad's day with the children, Taylor said.

As the days go by, Taylor said, coping with her husband's death is becoming more difficult.

``When everything happened (on Friday), I just went numb. And since then, there has always been somebody here... This is the first time I've kind of been by myself,'' she said. ``The numbness is starting to wear off.''

Whether it was playing with the children or doing household chores, Taylor said her husband always took care of his family.

``There are not many men out there like that,'' she said, ``but my husband was. He cooked, he cleaned, he changed diapers. He did everything... We raised our children together.''

Taylor said she also has found comfort in the many friends and family members who have been by her side.

``We're just staying here and making sure she's OK,'' said JuMekia Jones, JuWanna Taylor's sister. Jones, 24, arrived from California on Saturday.

``I said to my friend, `Ooh, that's a cute guy,' '' Taylor said, remembering when they met in 1994. Her friend happened to know Eric and called him over.

``We exchanged phone numbers that night,'' Taylor said. ``On the way home, I told my friend, `He's going to be my husband.' ''

``Lately, I didn't worry much at all,'' she said. ``I just thought this (Massillon) was a safe place to work.''

When one of Eric Taylor's fellow officers pulled into the family's driveway Friday night to inform JuWanna her husband had been shot, she thought it was her husband coming home, she said.

Even when the officer rang the doorbell, she still didn't think anything of it, she said.

``I just thought he forgot his key at work,'' she said. ``I just opened the door and walked away from it.''

When the officer told her that her husband had been shot, Taylor said she ``freaked out.''

Taylor said Massillon police officers have shared information surrounding her husband's death so she can know as much as possible.

``He engaged the suspect, not knowing he was armed,'' she said officers told her.

Taylor said officers told her that her husband tried to exit his car through the passenger-side door when Donald W. Matthews, 61, of Jackson Township fired.

``The car was still in drive and kept rolling, but he managed to escape from the car,'' she said.

When the gunfire ceased, Eric Taylor, who was wearing a bulletproof vest, had been fatally shot. Matthews also had been shot dead.

While her husband always had a way of making others smile, Taylor said it was tough to get him to grin for a camera.

``He wasn't big on taking pictures,'' she said, laughing. Taylor said she had to ``basically beg'' her husband to sit for a family photo about six months ago.

``I can't express into words how appreciative I am and how it feels to know that he has gotten a response like this,'' she said.

Calling hours will be from 3 to 9 p.m. Thursday at the Stewart & Calhoun funeral home, 529 W. Thornton St. in Akron. There also will be calling hours from 9 to 11 a.m. Friday at the House of the Lord, 1650 Diagonal Road in Akron. The funeral service will begin at 11 a.m.

Following the ceremony, Eric Taylor will be buried at Mount Peace Cemetery, 183 Aqueduct St. in Akron.

``But also then it's the beginning of a life without him,'' she said. ``That's going to be the toughest.''

Does being stopped for speeding by the police constitute a valid, lawful, or Constitutional reason to use deadly force to repel the traffic stop in self-defense?

Of course not. Not today, anyway. The act of speeding calls on the police power of the state, and the use of police power is lawful in that sense, but all the licensing and registration with attending regulations is statutory, not law.

I don't see the use of deadly force as appropriate in this case, at this time, but Matthews did, so for him it was valid, "valid" being a subjective term.

Constitutional is another consideration entirely. "Constitutionally", deadly force is appropriate when life and liberty is threatened ,and in some cases, property.

The whole notion of guiding a motorized carriage around the countryside being a "privilege" has been stonewalled at the state appelate court level. The question can't get to the state or US supreme courts for examination wthout one of the courts of appeal breaking ranks and ruling differently. Officials have admitted, unofficially to be sure, that the driving of a motor car is a right, but has to be treated as a privilige for more efficient revenue raising for the state.

The police officer was armed and was authorized to use that arm. He had the wide power to arrest movement and confiscate property. The appropriate use of deadly force would depend on how wide that power is given him by the legislature an how he exercises it. So, like I say, no, not now, but I'm fully prepared to condone use of deadly force in the event his power to harrass, kill the citizens he is supposed to protect, remove their livlihood and destroy their liberty is expanded past the point of reasonablness by the legislative power.

I guess the question I have for you is, does there even exist a point of tyranny beyond which you will no longer cooperate? From reading your post on many topics on this forum, I suspect not, and if not, that would make you a coward.

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. --That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. --Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain [George III] is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us, in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by the Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

There's some more nuts that signed this document. Might want to add them to the list too..

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