Our first reaction to the coroner’s inquest in the death of James Taylor was- wow that was fast.
Shot to death on September 5th, the inquest was held a little, a very little over a month after the young man was killed.
His killer Glen Mead walked.
Now it is quite possible he shouldn’t have.
What with the Mickie Costanzo murder and the Peter Coca trial coming up we can well understand how the resources of the Elko County District Attorney’s office are stretched pretty thin.
But still it would not have taken a whole lot of leg work to spend a day looking for potential witnesses.
Now those witnesses have come forward and the picture they paint is vastly different from the story line presented at the coroner’s inquest.
So what will be?
If those witnesses are telling the truth the DA had a pretty good reason to charge Mr. Mead with murder at least before the coroner’s inquest.
But just what would a jury make of it now?
He was acquitted in a court after all with a finding of justifiable homicide.
So we ask what might have been had there not been such a rush to the inquest.
We had a nice chat with Glenn Taylor Wednesday morning, before the bombshell was dropped.
To tell the truth while we sympathized with his loss, we did not think he had much of a chance to see his son’s killer brought to justice.
We were wrong.
Sometimes a father’s gut instinct is right.
So as fathers ourselves we ask Elko District Attorney Marc Torvinen to reopen the case and charge Mead.
Even considering the embarrassment and the added paper work and expense murders should be tried.
And even if this case is so polluted now it will make getting a conviction that much harder James Taylor deserves justice.
We have been told that those expensive ‘Opportunity is Knocking’ billboards paid for by the City of West Wendover are coming down.
Another in a long line of bad ideas and wastes of money.
We have no problem with the city council wasting money but they never waste it here.
And pretty soon there will be no more money to waste.