The cause of Sean Taylor's murder earlier this week now points to a burglary gone bad.
Four males were arrested Friday, two men and two juveniles, and according to the confessions Miami-Dade County police reportedly received from the quartet, they entered Taylor's house looking for items to steal. When they entered Taylor's bedroom during the early Monday morning incident, Taylor surprised them and one of the intruders shot him.
The Associated Press, via ESPN, reported that the four suspects did not expect Taylor to be at his Miami home during football season, but Taylor had been rehabbing from a knee injury primarily at home for several weeks, leading to the fatal confrontation.
The AP identified the four suspects as: Venjah K. Hunte, 20; Eric Rivera Jr., 17; Jason Scott Mitchell, 17; and Charles Kendrick Lee Wardlow, 18. Charges had not been filed as of Saturday morning, but are expected to be related to murder and burglary.
Mitchell and Wardlow had prior connections to Taylor, according to the Miami Herald via ESPN. Mitchell did chores around Taylor's house. Taylor's sister reportedly dated Wardlow's cousin.
Friday's news took the Taylor story in an entirely new direction. Prior to the arrests of the four suspects, widespread opinion was that someone from Taylor's sometimes-troubled past had targeted him. Arizona Cardinals cornerback Antrel Rolle, a childhood friend of Taylor's, told the AP that a number of acquaintances "had been targeting him for three years now," and that "he lived his life scared every day of his life down in Miami because those people were targeting him."
Taylor, 24, died early Tuesday morning due to massive blood loss when a bullet severed the femoral artery in his leg. His girlfriend and 18-month-old daughter, who were also in the bedroom at the time of the shooting, were not injured.
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