Editor's note: At the request of Officer Taylor, the original photo has been removed and replaced with the one supplied by the Roanoke Rapids Police Department.
Officer Keith Prince does in Emporia what John Taylor does in Roanoke Rapids — patrol Interstate 95.
“We’ve known each other a couple of years,” Prince, a member of the Emporia Police Department said this evening. “We do the same thing and we have communication back and forth.”
Prince was working a drug seizure when Taylor was shot November 17.
When he heard the news, “At first I was in shock. I thank God he’s OK. He’s one of heck of an officer.”
The car Emporia has with an automated license scanner was on another assignment when Michael Eugene Edgerton, the man who shot Taylor and later killed himself, and his fiancee, Renee Michele Phillips, who is charged as an accessory, most likely went through Emporia on the interstate, heading south.
Now, Prince said, “The main thing is he’s OK. It’s a miracle. It’s truly a miracle. God was with him that day.”
Prince and Corporal Frank Mainwaring, also an Emporia police officer, are members of the Stuart Jackson Edwards Lodge 30 of the Virginia Fraternal Order of Police, Mainwaring the secretary and treasurer.
Today they visited Taylor and presented him a check for $1,500, after the lodge Wednesday voted unanimously to do so, Mainwaring said. “The lodge has had a good couple of years and had extra money.”
It is money which comes from fundraisers the lodge does throughout the year and is designated for charitable causes.
The members could not think of a better cause for the money to go to Taylor and his family. “We hope it helps them, not only with their expenses, but also helps them have a better Christmas,” Mainwaring said in an email. “We, members of the Fraternal Order Of Police take the fraternal part serious. We are glad to help our fellow brother who was injured while protecting and serving Roanoke Rapids.”
Mainwaring encourages other FOP lodges to do the same and they may call him at 434-594-4489 or Lee Seymour at 434-634-6671.
