Roanoke shooting suspect ordered to stay in jail until trial

A teenager who cut off his court-mandated tracking device and became a fugitive from police, then was later charged in two Roanoke shootings this year, will stay in jail at least until his October trial.

De’Sha Shamal Taylor, 17, was ordered by a judge to remain held without bond at his hearing Friday morning in Roanoke Circuit Court.

Taylor was indicted by a Roanoke grand jury last week on charges of maliciously wounding a 13-year-old girl in May and using a firearm to do so.

He was previously denied bond when his case was heard in July in Juvenile and Domestic Relations District Court, and he’s now slated to stand trial Oct. 28.

In a separate incident, Taylor also faces a charge of unlawful wounding after an April 9 shooting at his home in northwest Roanoke that led to the hospitalization of his mother’s boyfriend. A detective later said Taylor told him that shooting was an accident.

During the hearing, defense attorney Hyatt Shirkey said Taylor had been in custody since May.

“He has a new son he has never gotten to hold because he’s been in jail these four months,” Shirkey told Judge David Carson.

Angela Taylor, the defendant’s mother, testified she would comply with whatever arrangements the court deemed necessary if her son was allowed to come home.

But Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney William Braxton said that when De’Sha Taylor had previously been out on bond on unrelated charges, he had removed a GPS monitoring device secured to his body.

“He was under your supervision at that time?” Braxton asked her. “And during that time, he got himself access to two different firearms?”

She acknowledged that was true.

Citing a police interview with Taylor, Braxton also told Carson the defendant was a member of a gang called the Melrose Block Boys who had gone to the May 4 party of a rival gang, the Lincoln Terrace Young Trills.

“He said he knew it was a mistake to go to the party, but he went there to see a girl,” Braxton said.

While there, Braxton said, Taylor said he was shoved by other gang members, heard threatening talk of guns and then began firing. The victim in the case, who is now 14 and is not being named, was shot in the hip and had to be hospitalized.

Taylor was later found by police hiding under a bed in a Beaumont Avenue apartment, near a .22-caliber handgun that matched five shell casings found at the scene, Braxton said.

Shirkey argued that the first shooting incident hadn’t been on purpose and the second was a response to threats.

“Both accidents and self-defense are not crimes,” Shirkey said, adding of the May 4 incident: “There’s no indication it was a particularly horrific shooting.”

But Carson said he felt Taylor had failed to overcome concerns of being a flight risk and his potential danger to the community.

“I do not like the sound of a lot of what I heard,” Carson told Taylor. “Particularly with a young man who looks like he could be helping on the Patrick Henry or William Fleming football field.

“I sure wish you would put all this behind you,” he later added.

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