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Christopher Wright was gardening in his front yard when a car pulled up to his Maryland house. He went inside to tell his 14-year-old son that his friends had arrived.
But on that May afternoon, Wright soon learned the visitors weren’t there to hang out, authorities said.
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A man confronted Wright about a fight his nephew and Wright’s son had at their middle school that day, police said, and demanded the teenagers fight again. Instead, a brawl broke out between the two adults.
At one point, the man threw Wright to the ground, officials said, causing his head to hit the pavement. The neighborhood tussle led to a countywide investigation after the man fled and Wright, 43, died of a head injury the next day, detectives said.
On Tuesday — nearly two months after the incident — Anne Arundel County police arrested 26-year-old Trevor Taylor of Glen Burnie, Md., on charges of manslaughter, second-degree assault, affray and disorderly conduct. He’s being held in an Annapolis detention center without bond.
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C. Edward Middlebrooks, Taylor’s attorney, told The Washington Post that his client will share his perspective in court but declined to comment further. He told the Capital Gazette on Wednesday that eight students had jumped Taylor’s nephew at school that day, demanding money.
Tracy Karopchinsky, Wright’s fiancée, declined to comment on the May incident. She remains “overwhelmed with sadness,” she wrote in an email to The Post, adding that her “heart just aches.”
“For the past two months I think I have relived every single memory that we ever made in our time together,” Karopchinsky wrote in an email. “Every first that we had and then thinking about every last things we did together. Then thinking about our last conversation and last I love you that we did not know would be our last.”
On May 19, Wright’s 14-year-old son got into a fight in a bathroom during lunch at Brooklyn Park Middle School in Baltimore, Principal Beth Shakan wrote in a letter to families. The altercation was with Taylor’s nephew, charging documents for Taylor would later reveal.
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“There was nothing about Friday’s lunchtime incident that provided any clue that what happened after school dismissed would transpire,” Shakan wrote at the time.
After the teenagers returned home, Taylor arrived in front of Wright’s Brooklyn, Md., house around 3:50 p.m. with his nephew, two teenage boys and another man, according to the charging documents. Taylor threatened to enter the home and to assault Wright if he didn’t permit the 14-year-olds to fight, investigators said.
Wright punched Taylor in the face before backing away, police said. Taylor advanced on Wright, punching him in return before Wright fled to the street, detectives said. There, Taylor grabbed Wright’s legs and tossed him to the ground, causing Wright to fall backward as his head struck the pavement, police said. Taylor punched Wright in the head four times before fleeing, officials said.
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Wright’s son called 911, and paramedics took Wright to Baltimore’s Maryland Shock Trauma Center. He suffered a stroke and underwent brain surgery, according to the family’s GoFundMe. Wright died the next night of a head injury, police said.
At Wright’s vigil in May, Karopchinsky, his fiancée, said Wright had sacrificed everything for his three sons.
“I want my kids to know first and foremost about daddy, that he loved them more than anything in this world,” she said.
Family members played one of Wright’s favorite songs, “Tha Crossroads” by Bone Thugs-N-Harmony. They acknowledged the milestones Wright will miss: his sons’ birthday parties, graduations and weddings.
“There is an ugliness to his death that makes it senseless,” Karopchinsky’s sister-in-law, Kristin Karopchinsky, said through tears. “It is so incomprehensible.”
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Tracy Karopchinsky wrote in her email that Wright loved to garden and was a Baltimore Orioles and Ravens fan. She and Wright moved into their Brooklyn house last August and often spoke about the memories they hoped to create there. They believed they had plenty of time to get married.
“The only thing that I can do to honor Chris,” she wrote, “is continue to be here for our children the way he was.”
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