PERRY HALL, Md. — Reports of gun shots, a vehicle left running and, ultimately, the body of a woman shot at point blank range found behind the wheel of her car.
The victim, 20-year-old Taylor Webb, lived 10 miles away in Baltimore City, and people living near the crime scene could only guess why it happened in their neighborhood.
"I guess it's because of the woods,” said Irene Ruby, “You can go either way. If somebody was after you, you can run down towards the Gunpowder or you can run back into here."
But it turns out there was nothing random about the shooting, nor the place where 19-year-old Christopher Engles allegedly killed his ex-girlfriend.
"We have been able to determine the reason why this occurred in Perry Hall, which seems to be a question on everybody's mind, is that the young man who is a suspect, Mr. Engles, does live about a half a mile from that area," said Ofc. Jennifer Peach of the Baltimore County Police Department.
According to charging documents, investigators learned that Webb and been in telephone contact with Engles throughout the day arranging a time to meet that evening.
On her way to the rendezvous, Webb wrote haunting text messages to an associate stating, "Here (is) my location in case he tries to kill me or set me up."
She goes on to text, "Yo I'm scared he (may) kill me."
Webb went on to text that Engles was walking down the street, he was making sure she was alone and he didn't live at the address where he asked her to meet him.
Initially, Engles told detectives he last spoke on the telephone with Webb 10 hours before the killing, but he changed his story when they produced records that showed they had communicated a matter of minutes before she was murdered.
