Philly officers raided a home looking for man who had died five months earlier

Tysha Melton awakened with a start one morning last month as law enforcement officials converged on her West Oak Lane home.

“Police! Police!“ she said they yelled as they pounded on the door. “Where is he?”

When she opened the door, Melton said, more than a dozen officers pushed their way inside, guns in hand. They told her they were looking for her son, Travys Taylor, and had a bench warrant for his arrest for failing to appear in court on drug and trespassing charges.

Melton was at once stunned and angry, she said. Taylor, 28, had been dead for five months.

He was shot and killed by a masked gunman in October as he left a takeout restaurant in Kensington. Police have made no arrests and have given no motive for the crime.

So when sheriff’s officers and police stormed her home looking for him, Melton said, she directed them to his upstairs bedroom. There, the officers found the memorial she built for him: an array of smiling photos of her son and a replica of an Eagles helmet atop a box with his ashes and this inscription:

In Loving Memory

Travys Lamont Taylor

June 10, 1993 - October 26, 2021

Funny & Loving Son, Brother, Uncle, Nephew & Friend

Seeing it, the officers quickly left the house, she said, some covering their badges as they scrambled out the door.

They made no apologies, said Melton, her eyes filling with tears as she recalled the incident in an interview in her living room.

She and her husband, Eliacin Juarbe, were terrified when officers burst into the house with guns, she said, and their upset lingers.

“How are you looking for my son’s murderer if you’re looking for him at the same time?” she asked. “That’s what I need to know. Not only did y’all violate me emotionally, you took all hope that I had in the last six months that somebody was at least out there looking for the murderer. Y’all showed me y’all ain’t looking for no dammed body except my son.”

The law enforcement operation that led officers to the house was initiated by the warrant unit of the Philadelphia Sheriff’s Office, which was joined by Probation and Parole and city police in conducting warrant sweeps that day, said Teresa Lundy, a spokesperson for Sheriff Rochelle Bilal.

Asked about the incident in light of Taylor’s death, Lundy said: “The Sheriff’s Office didn’t ‘fail.’” She said there was no mechanism for checking in advance of a raid to see whether someone wanted on an outstanding warrant had died.

However, she said, “the Sheriff’s Office is looking into having a conversation with the District Attorney’s Office and the courts to figure if a database can be created to combat this issue.”

Philadelphia Homicide Capt. Jason Smith said Taylor’s death is still under active investigation. Homicide detectives were not part of the raid, he said, but the officers who were should have checked to see whether Taylor was still alive, in custody for the warrant, or behind bars for an unrelated charge.

“These are checks that are supposed to be made prior to any kind of warrant being served,” Smith said.

Sgt. Eric Gripp, a Philadelphia Police Department spokesperson, said the department had launched an Internal Affairs investigation into what happened at Melton’s home to “determine what officers were involved and what their actions were.”

Melton and Juarbe, meanwhile, have hired a lawyer and plan to sue the city. Attorney Raphael Castro said the law enforcement operation that targeted their home had “terrorized” a grieving family.

“There is no excuse for how those law enforcement agencies acted,” he said. “... This is appalling and shouldn’t happen to anyone.

“This is total mismanagement, miscommunication, irreparable harm, and totally shoddy police work,” he said.

These days, Melton said she rarely goes into her son’s old bedroom ― now his shrine. It’s too painful, she said shortly after entering the room on a recent day.

“They wasn’t looking for who took my baby,” she said. “They were looking for him.”