James Goodrich hasn’t been the same since the night his friend was killed last summer on White Oak Hill Road.

He hardly leaves the house these days, and when he does venture out it’s a nerve-wracking affair.

What hounds the man the most are the questions — questions that for nearly six months have gone unanswered.

Who was the man who opened fire Aug. 2, 2024, on the car Goodrich and three others were sitting in on that grim night in Poland?

Who was that man whose wild spray of gunfire struck his friend in the back, killing him almost instantly? 

Above all, Goodrich, who was shot in the foot during the ordeal, would like to know why the gunman who fired those deadly rounds has never been charged with any crime.

As it happens, the killing of Richard Tayman Jr., 51, of Oxford has been since declared a matter of self-defense. Goodrich had no idea because for six months Maine State Police haven’t been taking his calls.

“Since the night it happened, they haven’t talked to me a single time,” Goodrich says. “I’ve called them 50 or 60 times but they never call back.” 

The shooting occurred about 9 p.m. on that warm, late summer night. How it all went down depends entirely on who you ask. 

An officer examines a car Aug. 2, 2024, in the Poland Fire Rescue Department parking lot. The vehicle was involved in an apparent shooting on White Oak Hill Road, which resulted in the death of Richard Tayman Jr., 51, of Oxford. Russ Dillingham/Sun Journal file

According to Goodrich, the car he was a passenger in had run out of gas in the area of 252 White Oak Hill Road. To get going again, one of Goodrich’s friends got out to purchase gasoline from a nearby house.

He was back soon after and fresh gas was dumped into the tank.

The group was about to get back on the road, Goodrich says, when a man came out of a house shouting and toting a gun. 

“He was hollering that he was not someone to be messed with and that he would kill us all,” Goodrich says. 

Seated in the car’s passenger seat, Tayman did something that may have cost him his life. 

“He flipped the guy off,” Goodrich says. “That probably wasn’t the best idea. And as soon as he did that, the shooting started.” 

Rounds struck the tires on one side of the car, blowing them out, Goodrich says. Other bullets punched into the car itself. One of those bullets struck Goodrich in the foot, breaking bones there, although he didn’t realize it at the time. 

As the gunman came around the back of the car, Goodrich says he reached for a woman seated beside him and pushed her head down. The round that missed her, he says, is likely the one that struck Tayman. 

“A shot hit him in the back and went right into the heart,” Goodrich says. “He slumped over and said, ‘I think I got shot.’ He was alive for maybe 35 seconds.'” 

What followed was chaos. 

Speeding away on badly mangled tires, the group made an erratic drive to the Poland Fire Station roughly three minutes away. There, they pulled Tayman out of the car and tried to revive him.

Police arrived at the scene and separated Goodrich from his companions. Goodrich, hobbling on his wounded foot, was taken to an ambulance. More police were arriving, including Maine State Police, who would be the lead investigators on what had turned into a homicide. 

Goodrich was worried about his friend, but didn’t know for sure that Tayman had died — even at that phase of the investigation, answers were hard to come by.

“They wouldn’t tell me anything about my friend,” Goodrich says. “I had a feeling he had passed away, but they wouldn’t tell me.” 

He was placed in a small room, Goodrich says. State Police came to talk to him briefly before leaving again. 

“They talked for about two minutes,” he said. “Then they just left us there for hours.” 

Finally, an officer from the Androscoggin County Sheriff’s Office came to give Goodrich a ride home. 

On his way out, Goodrich says, state police casually broke the news to him. His friend had indeed died in the shooting.

Goodrich was ferried away to his home and police continued their investigation.  

A few days after the shooting, state police revealed that the death of Tayman had been ruled a homicide. They knew who had fired the deadly shot, they said, but no charges had been filed. 

After that? Nothing. 

The Sun Journal archives show no updates to the story following that brief development. It wasn’t until Tuesday, when the Sun Journal contacted state police for a response to Goodrich’s claims, that the paper learned the case had been declared self-defense and the matter closed.

Goodrich, for one, is aghast. In his view, the people in the car on that night did nothing to warrant being fired upon.

“Self-defense?” he says. “We were leaving. We were not a threat to him in any way, so how is what he did not murder?”

There are some on social media, who might more readily accept the declaration of self-defense.

In the days and weeks following the shooting, there was significant discussion about the killing in online circles. There were plenty of people who insisted that it was Goodrich and his friends who instigated the shooting.

Some say the group was in the act of stealing gas when they were fired upon. Others suggested that maybe Goodrich and his group had fired the first shots.

“There are so many stories out there online,” Goodrich says. “People are saying that we were out there to rob houses and steal gas and all kinds of stuff like that. It enrages me to read it. If any of that was true, where was the gun? Where were the shell casings? Why didn’t they test us for gun residue on our hands? Why haven’t we been charged?” 

It’s a fair point. Just as the gunman has not been charged, neither were any of the three men and one woman who occupied the car on that deadly night.  

Some of those rumors, Goodrich suspects, stem from the fact that a few of those involved have criminal histories. Tayman himself had a history, mostly involving drugs and driving infractions. 

But, Goodrich is quick to explain, the man was no outlaw. Past or no past, Tayman certainly did not deserve to be gunned down the way he was. 

“He wasn’t a saint or anything,” Goodrich says, “but he took care of his friends and his family. He’d give the shirt off his back and all that. I just don’t understand why he had to die the way he did.” 

For six months, Goodrich has waited for clarity, for some small development in the case to provide a greater perspective on what went down that night on White Oak Hill Road.

But those developments haven’t materialized and Goodrich remains haunted. 

“I’ve gone through a lot of counseling,” Goodrich says. “This has upended my life. It feels like I lost my friend for nothing and we have no answers.” 

Every time he goes to the store, Goodrich says, he wonders about the stranger buying milk next to him: Is this the one? Is this the man who killed his friend? 

Everywhere he turns, he feels he might run into the gunman and not even know it. How COULD he know? Goodrich never got a good look at the shooter’s face as bullets were flying and so much madness was unfolding inside that car.

“I haven’t left my house in six months, other than trips to the store and back,” he says. “I lost my apartment. I’d just like to make some sense of this. Why did my friend have to be killed and why have there been no charges?” 

The ruling of self-defense, Goodrich says, “blows my mind.”

A builder by trade, at the time of the shooting Goodrich had been helping Tayman build a house. To Goodrich’s bedazzled eye, it was like his friend was there one moment and gone the next. 

And so he makes his calls. He’s tried calling the Town Office in Poland a time or two. He’s tried getting answers out of the Androscoggin County Sheriff’s Office. 

But no dice — state police are in charge of the investigation and so whatever answers there were would have to come through that agency. And those answers never came.

More silence

Goodrich is not the first to be troubled by a tight-lipped state police investigation. 

In December 2023, a mother and daughter were found dead at their home on Red Schoolhouse Road in Farmington.  

The deaths of Jean Robinson, 76, and Allison “Joy” Cumming, 53, were ruled homicides, but before that news came out, horrified neighbors were already complaining that state police weren’t telling them enough. 

Two months later, as nerve-rattled residents continued to grouse about the lack of information, Maine Department of Public Safety Spokeswoman Shannon Moss released a statement. 

“Every death and/or homicide investigation is complex and presents its own unique set of challenges,” Moss wrote in March 2024. “Sometimes these investigations can take days, weeks, months or sometimes years. Frankly the public’s desire to know the facts surrounding what happened does not dictate when information is released. The investigation dictates that. Detectives, evidence response technicians and prosecutors have one shot at a case and that’s why they are diligent and methodical in their work. The goal is justice for the victims.” 

Now more than a year since the bodies of Robinson and Cummings were found, there has been nothing more released. There are rumors, sure, but with state police offering not even crumbs of information, that’s all they are: rumors that can’t be substantiated and that don’t do much to soothe the minds of those who still wonder.

And now, with Richard Tayman in his grave six long months after the shooting in Poland, Goodrich fears that, as it was for the folks on Red Schoolhouse Road in Farmington, he might never get any answers at all. He might go the rest of his life without knowing anything more at all about the demise of his friend.

Goodrich finally got an answer about the status of the case, although he doesn’t agree at all with the investigation’s findings. His argument now will be with the Attorney General’s Office, which made the ruling of self-defense.

On Tuesday, Goodrich was struggling with the news that nobody will be charged with killing his friend and he supposes he’ll have to find a way to live with that outcome.

But still, Goodrich can’t help but think: a call back from state police sure would have been nice.