With money from a seven-year, US$18 million contract, Taylor bought a pair of all-terrain vehicles. Four-wheel ATV's are popular in West Perrine. They can be seen on weekends buzzing down side streets and traversing the yards of housing projects.
On May 31, 2005, after cruising West Perrine with a friend, Taylor parked his new ATV's at McFarlane's house. Taylor left the vehicles overnight, though he did not stay at the house himself, according to Carhart.
The narrative of what followed, including Taylor's arrest, is laid out in the felony records room of the Richard E. Gerstein Justice Building in Miami. Two folders bulge with the incident report, lawyers' motions and a dozen depositions of witnesses and police officers.
When McFarlane awoke June 1, he discovered the ATV's were missing, according to Carhart. He and a friend, and then eventually Taylor, drove around the neighborhood looking for the vehicles, according to the police report.
The reports said that Taylor's blue Yukon Denali cruised several times past a house where Ryan Hill was hanging out with friends. Hill approached the vehicle to ask Taylor what he wanted.
"He started talking nasty and stuff, talking about how, `The police can't touch me. I own this town,'" Hill, 22, said in an interview on the stoop outside his mother's public housing apartment in West Perrine, where he lives with her, a brother and a sister.
According to Hill and other witnesses, Taylor exited his truck, pulled a gun out of his waistband and pointed it at Hill and a couple of his friends. Witnesses claim another man pulled out an M-16 and demanded that Hill return Taylor's ATVs. When Hill denied stealing the vehicles, Taylor and the other man left in their cars. Both vowed to return and kill everyone present, according to depositions from Hill and other witnesses.
Ten minutes later, Taylor did come back, this time with what has been labeled in the police report "a posse" of men in other cars. He confronted Hill and his friends.
Hill, a 6-foot-3, 273-pound former high school football star, said in the interview that Taylor was "just jumping up, like in a football game. He was just jumping up, like hyped. Then he just swung at me when he got across the street. I fought him back."
The fight broke up when Hill and his friends scattered. Taylor returned to his Yukon and drove back to McFarlane's house, several blocks north. He parked the truck in front of the house, which he entered. A silver car pulled up. Hands poked out of the car's windows. From inside the house, McFarlane noticed guns and dived to the floor, according to depositions given by witnesses to Taylor's lawyers. The Yukon was struck at least 15 times, and the police recovered 27 bullet cases, according to the police report.
Taylor was not at the house when the police arrived. McFarlane and others refused to allow the police to search the house, according to officers.
Three days after the shooting, Taylor surrendered at a police substation near West Perrine. He posted US$16,500 bond and was released. He has pleaded not guilty to all charges against him.
Just days before the trial was scheduled to start this week, Taylor's lawyers found that the prosecutor, Michael Grieco, had put press clippings from the case on his Web site to promote his other job as a D.J. Grieco stepped down, and the trial has been postponed until May. Richard Sharpstein, another of Taylor's lawyers, said he would file a motion next week to dismiss the case.
The Miami-Dade state attorney's office has vowed to continue the prosecution.
In a statement, State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle said nothing on Grieco's Web site "compromised the integrity of the Sean Taylor case."
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