Crime & Safety

'If They Called the Cops, I'm Screwed': Fight Participant Testifies in Rose Hill Murder Trial

Defense attorney says witness will lie to cover up drug dealing.

Correction: This article originally stated that Wyatt Campbell said, "If they called the cops, I'm screwed." Randy Taylor actually said that at trial, and the article has been corrected to reflect that. Kingstowne Patch regrets the error.

The trial of a Rose Hill teen accused of murder continued Tuesday afternoon, with testimony from one of only four people believed to have witnessed the fight that allegedly resulted in the death of Wyatt Campbell.

It is Patch policy not to name minors accused of crimes.

Find out what's happening in Kingstowne-Rose Hillwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Randy Taylor, 21, testified that he was hanging out with Campbell the night he died, and later joined him in a fight.

Taylor's testimony preceded accusations from the defendant's attorney that he would lie on the stand to cover up an alleged drug-dealing relationship between Taylor; Campbell; and a third man who drove Campbell to the hospital after the fight and, according to the defense, participated in it.

Find out what's happening in Kingstowne-Rose Hillwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Patch is currently declining to identify the third man because he is being accused of crimes, and it's not clear yet whether he is a minor.

These accusations were made with the jury outside the room because Judge Brett A. Kassabian of alleged drug dealing, ruling that drugs were not involved in Campbell's death.

On October 14, in a time period identified between 9:30 p.m. and 10:15 p.m., Taylor drove Campbell to Rose Hill to drop him off. First, though, they stopped at the 7-Eleven in the Rose Hill Shopping Center so Taylor could buy Campbell cigarettes.

According to Taylor, Campbell didn't have his identification on him, and he looked too young to buy without one.

As the two pulled up to the 7-Eleven, Taylor said, the defendant's older brother approached Campbell, still in the car.

"Did you get my brother?" Taylor testified hearing the man ask Campbell. According to to police, Campbell and two other boys, pretending to be police officers, had robbed the defendant and some of his friends.

Taylor then said the defendant's older brother punched Campbell in the side of the head. Asked by Greenberg to explain how the brother punched Campbell, Taylor offered to demonstrate.

"I'm going to play it out just like Hollywood for you, man," he said.

With the defendant still in another car, Campbell and the older brother began yelling at each other. 

"It was just like the heat of the moment," Taylor said. "Everybody was talking crap."

Taylor didn't want to fight in front of the 7-Eleven for several reasons: he was on probation for a felony offense, he knew the store had surveillance cameras, and there was a small amount of marijuana in the car.

"People are going to call the cops there," he testified.

Taylor tried to maneuver his car out of the parking lot. After being initially blocked by the defendant's brother, he succeeded, and drove to Campbell's grandmother's home, in a nearby apartment complex. Taylor said it was clear the encounter with the defendant and his brother was not finished.

"An example needs to be set," he testified. 

Campbell and Taylor began walking from Campbell's grandmother's home to a sidestreet behind the 7-Eleven, a distance of about a block-and-a-half.

Greenberg pressed Taylor on whether Campbell was carrying a golf club, because a broken golf club was found at the scene of the crime. Taylor said he never saw what Campbell was carrying, because Campbell was behind him the whole time.

Taylor eventually conceded that Campbell was in front of him when they returned to the 7-Eleven to find out if the police had been called. 

"If they called the cops, I'm screwed," Taylor said at trial, then added that he just wanted to know. He said he still did not see if Campbell had a golf club.

Soon after that, the two friends met with the brothers behind the convenience store. Taylor punched the older brother, who he says was aiming a toy gun at him. The brother responded by hitting Taylor with the gun. 

"It was one of my longer fights," Taylor said.

Meanwhile, Taylor said, he saw the defendant on top of Campbell, then fighting with Campbell against a fence. Still, Taylor said he didn't see much of the other half of the fight.

"It's like television," he said. "All you're seeing is your opponent."

Eventually, another friend of Campbell's arrived. While the defense maintains this third man helped throughout the fight, Taylor said that he couldn't remember how long his friend, who is about 6 feet tall, weighing between 250 and 300 pounds, according to Taylor, was there.

As the fight ended, this third man took Campbell to the hospital. Although Taylor said he never saw the defendant stab Campbell, he testified that Campbell seemed short of breath.

"This n**** hit me in my lung," Taylor recalled Campbell saying to him as he left, using a racial slur.

After the fight, Taylor said, he went to a friend's house, changed clothes, and went to the hospital. Greenberg, in arguments with the jury out of the room, said that Taylor had used the time after the fight to hide a safe containing marijuana.

The defense seized on several seeming discrepancies between Taylor's testimony at the trial and earlier statements to police.

Taylor initially said he only talked to the third man, briefly, at the hospital, but when confronted by a call between him and the man after the fight, he acknowledged that they talked briefly.

Taylor also did not have an explanation for why his phone was found in the third man's car at the hospital.

"It's a mystery to me, too," he said.

Taylor was asked whether Campbell usually carried a knife. An officer at the hospital found a spring-loaded knife in Campbell's personal effects. 

"I never knew him to carry a weapon," Taylor said. "He carried a utility knife."

Several other witnesses testified in the afternoon. Devinder Singh, the owner of the Rose Hill 7-Eleven, testified about his store's surveillance camera. 

Homicide detective Stephen Needls also testified about the custody of the video tape from the night that was given to police. No video was shown in the trial.

Detective John Tuller, a crime scene investigator with FCPD, testified about the scene in the hospital where Campbell died from his wounds. Tuller showed the shirt Campbell had been wearing in the hospital: a white polo shirt with blue stripes, about half of it stained with what looked like blood. 

Investigating the car that took Campbell to the hospital, Tuller said, he found several blood stains and a wooden-handled knife with no blood on it. 

FCPD homicide Detective Eric Dean, the lead investigator on the case, also testified about getting a DNA swab from the defendant's mouth.

Finally, Detective Michael S. Lamper testified about various pieces of evidence that he saw at the crime scene, including blood stains and the broken golf club.

The trial is set to resume Wednesday at 9 a.m.


Get more local news delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for free Patch newsletters and alerts.

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here

To request removal of your name from an arrest report, submit these required items to arrestreports@patch.com.

More from Kingstowne-Rose Hill