A Hammond man was sentenced Friday to 150 years for the 2019 double slaying of a mom and her 13-year-old son in Gary’s Miller section.
Darren Taylor, 41, was charged in the March 23, 2019, shooting deaths of Temia Haywood, 35, and her son, Lavell Edmond, in their Gary home.
Taylor’s father had allegedly been in a relationship with Haywood for several years, and had been arguing with Haywood the day of the incident, court records state.
He said he would appeal.
Judge Diane Boswell said Taylor had “no remorse” and appeared to have a “nonchalant look on his face,” even as violent crime scene photos were shown at sentencing.
“You need to feel something when you see people you know,” she told him.
A relative said afterward they were happy with the sentencing and would have wanted the death penalty.
During the hearing, Haywood’s daughter and sister spoke of their grief and anger. The boy, especially, didn’t even know him, his sister Naymiah Haywood said.
“We’re nothing without her,” Naymiah said, who was 16 at the time. “You had no business going into my mother’s home.”
“You gone forever,” she told Taylor. “You going down. Down.”
Temia Haywood’s sister, Rosetta Haywood, said she had been trying to get out of the relationship with Taylor’s father for some time.
Taylor’s attorney, Lakeisha Murdaugh, objected as Rosetta Haywood continued to focus on him. When gently prompted by the judge, she spoke further of her family’s devastation. Her sister’s son had been trying to protect her, she said.
“Our family has been torn apart,” she said. Her sister was an “old soul,” very protective of her children who held the family together, held people accountable for their actions.
“There’s times I can’t sleep,” she said. “I wasn’t there to save her and (Edmond).”
Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Patrick Grindlay called Taylor “deceitful, deviant, violent, depraved.”
Haywood was a mother of four. Their deaths were “execution-style” killings, he said.
At trial, Taylor testified on his own behalf, giving the jury a story they “did not believe,” Grindlay said.
Taylor had an extensive criminal history, including 29 contacts with the criminal justice system. He had his probation revoked twice in 2001 and 2002, while he violated a probation in 2007, the prosecutor said.
He asked for a 166-year sentence.
“If I could ask for the death penalty, I would,” Grindlay said, citing a bible passage.
Murdaugh retorted that the Bible also held room for grace and mercy.
She asked the court for some leniency for Taylor’s three children. Earlier in the pandemic during Zoom hearings, Taylor’s children were in the background.
“I watched her expression of love toward her father,” she said of his daughter. The “love and bond he has with his children.”
Taylor denied involvement from shortly after the killings, according to criminal filings.
He “has the right to maintain his innocence,” she said.
Taylor, when allowed to address the court, did not speak to Haywood’s family.
“I can’t take responsibility for something I didn’t do,” he said.
“Y’all ambushed me at trial, period,” Taylor said, arguing about evidence.
“Those are issues if you want to appeal,” Boswell told him.
“You are going to do what you are going to do,” he told the judge, before thanking her for allowing him to be on house arrest until his trial. “I want to get my journey started.”
Officers were called around 8 p.m. March 23 to Haywood’s residence in the 6800 block of East 3rd Avenue where police found Haywood on the floor and her son behind a door in a bedroom, a probable cause affidavit states.
One of Haywood’s daughters who was home at the time escaped the shooting by jumping from a second-floor window, according to the affidavit.
The girl told police that she was upstairs with Edmond when she heard Haywood telling someone on the phone that they could come over, the affidavit states. About 10 minutes later, the girl heard someone knock on the front door. When the girl looked downstairs “she could only see some red shoes” and thought she heard an unfamiliar male voice, according to the affidavit.
The girl then “heard what she thought might have been gunshots” but did not see the shooting, the affidavit states. As she ran to her room she heard her brother say, “Mom is shot,” according to the affidavit. The girl then “jumped from the window in her bedroom, climbed over the neighbor’s fence and hid,” court records state.
Police found a doorbell camera by the front door that showed two men come into the residence around 8 p.m. March 23, the affidavit states.
People told police that they recognized one of the men as Taylor, the son of a man Haywood “had been in a long relationship with,” according to the affidavit.
Taylor’s father told police he “was really hurt” when he heard about Haywood’s death, the affidavit states. The man said “he heard from a few people that his son killed Temia,” but his son told him that he didn’t do it and not to believe anything that he has heard, the affidavit states.
A post made on Taylor’s Facebook page after the double homicide stated, “Y’all know (expletive) well I ain’t did no (expletive) like that,” court records state. Another person commented on the post, “That’s your picture ringing her doorbell around the time of the shooting,” according to the affidavit. The Facebook page was later deactivated, the affidavit states.
Officers from the U.S. Marshals Task Force, along with the Indianapolis Metro Police Department, arrested Taylor around 9:50 p.m. April 4, 2019, in Indianapolis, where he lived at the time.
