On May 29, 2017, Memorial Day in Goodyear, Arizona, a series of 911 calls reported gunfire coming from a small neighborhood park near Estrella Parkway and Lower Buckeye Road. When officers arrived around noon, they found David Michael Amado, a 21-year-old Black / African American male, lying in the park with a fatal gunshot wound. The park, normally a quiet community space near residential streets and the Goodyear Ballpark area, was quickly transformed into a major crime scene as police cordoned off the grass, walkways, and adjacent parking areas.
Witnesses told investigators they heard a single or small number of shots and then saw people running from the area. Some accounts described possibly multiple individuals fleeing on foot from the homeowners’ association park near North 156th Avenue and West Meade Lane, which lies within the same general Estrella/Lower Buckeye corridor. Patrol officers and detectives canvassed the neighborhood, looking for anyone who had seen vehicles or suspicious activity around the time of the shooting, roughly between 12:00 and 12:30 p.m. Despite the busy holiday, no clear suspect description was immediately available, and early bulletins from law enforcement simply noted that the assailant or assailants were unknown and at large.
As the scene was processed, investigators recovered crucial physical evidence. A 9 mm handgun, believed to be the murder weapon, was discovered by landscapers in the vicinity of the park after the shooting. Nearby, officers located Amado’s vehicle and, during a search, found approximately $600 in cash and two cell phones. Forensic review of one of those phones revealed numerous text messages discussing the sale of marijuana, suggesting that the meeting at the park may have been arranged as part of a drug transaction that turned violent. These details shifted the focus of the investigation toward a robbery scenario connected to an illicit sale, rather than a random attack.
Detectives used the phone data to build a timeline of Amado’s final communications. Phone records highlighted one contact in particular, 20-year-old Jeffrey Takeynon Taylor of Memphis, Tennessee, as a possible suspect. Additional witnesses later came forward and identified Taylor as the person they saw with Amado at the park and as the man they believed pulled the trigger during the confrontation. By the time these leads solidified, Taylor had fled Arizona and returned to Tennessee, complicating efforts to bring him into custody and prompting coordination between Goodyear authorities and out-of-state agencies.
In early 2019, investigators learned that Taylor was back in Goodyear. On February 24, police confirmed his presence in the area; the following day, they moved in and arrested him. According to official statements, Taylor was taken into custody without incident and booked into the Maricopa County jail. He was held on a $1,000,000 bond and faced multiple serious charges, including first-degree murder, armed robbery, aggravated assault, unlawful discharge of a firearm, and aggravated robbery, all tied to the armed robbery and shooting that killed Amado in the park on May 29, 2017. Subsequent public case summaries now list the homicide as solved, reflecting that law enforcement has identified and charged a primary suspect in the killing, even as court proceedings and outcomes are handled through the criminal justice system.
