‘I feel responsible’: Red Rose victim’s friend says bullet was meant for him
Instinctively, he headed for the corner seat at the bar.
Despite a philosophy of always seeking the best in people, experience taught Jerrell Grandison-Douglas to be cognizant of his surroundings, and the corner seat provided the widest view of the room.
It’s part of being black in York County. Of being black in America.
So, on the one night he reserves for unwinding after a week’s worth of work as a machinist, the 25-year-old Hallam man headed toward the familiar Red Rose Restaurant & Lounge.
Grandison-Douglas and a friend arrived from another bar shortly before 1 in the early morning hours of Saturday, July 21.
At his corner seat, which allows Grandison-Douglas to “see the whole bar and make sure everything’s OK,” he ordered his usual beer and shot.
He hadn’t even taken a sip.
“Who let these [racial slur] into the bar?”
Grandison-Douglas’ head popped up.
His eyes settled on a 24-year-old named James Saylor, a face he did not recognize but a ferocity and an expression he did.
A veteran of facing this type of aggression, he quickly suppressed the urge to respond with anger.
“Excuse me?” Grandison-Douglas asked.
James Saylor, 24, of Windsor. (York County Sheriff’s Office)
“Who allowed you to come to this bar? We don’t let [racial slur] in here,” he recalled Saylor responding.
Grandison-Douglas and other friends of color regularly hang out at the Red Rose. He’s never faced any such hostility. He loves the food, the environment, considers many of the employees his friends. It’s near his home. It’s a comfortable spot.
But this was anything but comfortable.
In those moments when racial slurs are hurled and irrational hate runs hot, Grandison-Douglas has learned to counter with composure.
So he sought common ground with Saylor, a Lower Windsor Township resident.
Grandison-Douglas comes from a military family, so he tried to talk about patriotism.
He offered to buy Saylor a beer and a shot.
“Fighting is not the answer,” Grandison-Douglas said in an exclusive interview with the York Daily Record this week. “It only creates more hatred. It only puts more hatred into your heart. So the best way to solve it is peace. No matter how hard it is, being calm and having a level head is the best way to do this from my personal experience.”
Saylor apparently wasn’t having it. Not on this night. He refused the olive branch.
“He said he ‘didn’t want to drink a drink with a [racial slur], nor do I want these [racial slur] drinking our fine drinks,’” Grandison-Douglas recalled.
He said he extended his arm for a handshake in a last-grasp attempt at peace, but Saylor again refused.
That’s when he felt a tug on his shoulder.
In the tumult, Grandison-Douglas hadn’t even noticed he was seated next to his longtime friend, Chad Merrill.
Known among pals for trying to mitigate tense situations, the 25-year-old Merrill was coming to his friend’s defense as the belligerent Saylor was being removed from the bar by Red Rose staff.
“Dude, don’t even worry about it. Ignore him,” Merrill said, Grandison-Douglas recalls. “You know that’s not you.”
His heart might have still been racing, but Grandison-Douglas was soon engaged in a familiar conversation with Merrill, the two talking about young fatherhood.
Chad Merrill died early Saturday morning after being shot once in the chest in the parking lot of the Red Rose Restaurant and Lounge. (Submitted)
After all, when Merrill found out last year that he was going to be a father, Grandison-Douglas was among the first whose advice he sought.
Grandison-Douglas’ daughter will turn 2 next month. Merrill’s son is 5 months old.
“I asked him about his kid,” Grandison-Douglas said. “And he put that goofy smile he has on and said he’s good.”
More: Family says Merrill “died a hero” as they struggle to move forward
Grandison-Douglas speculates Merrill, though, continued to feel the responsibility of peacemaker and of wanting to make sure Grandison-Douglas felt safe.
Merrill headed toward the exit to follow up with Saylor. At the bar, Grandison-Douglas felt anxious.
“I know the signs, and that’s true hate,” Grandison-Douglas said of Saylor’s words and actions. “And you don’t understand what those people can do.”
The bartender and owner of the Red Rose, meanwhile, praised Grandison-Douglas for his handling of the verbal aggression.
Grandison-Douglas was just starting to respond by suggesting somebody check on the situation outside.
That’s when somebody rushed into the bar announcing someone had been shot.
Grandison-Douglas’ gut told him it was Merrill.
Jerrell Grandison-Douglas fidgets with his hands while recalling the night his friend was shot to death, allegedly by the man that hurled racial slurs at Grandison-Douglas earlier in the night. “I have to honor Chad,” Grandison-Douglas said. “I do believe wholeheartedly that that bullet had my name on it. And I don’t wish that on anybody. I don’t wish anyone to have to lose their son, mother, child or father. So his story deserves to be heard. It needs to be heard. The world needs to know that it’s not all bad, and not everybody is bad, and there are people out there doing the right things.” (Ty Lohr/The York Daily Record)
The entirety of the bar rushed outside. Grandison-Douglas didn’t want to look, but he did anyway, confirming his fears.
With the benefit of surveillance and eyewitness reports, Hellam Township police later wrote in an affidavit of probable cause that Saylor, after being kicked out of the bar, initially discharged a round from his gun toward the building.
Merrill, after exiting the bar, was then shown by surveillance to approach Saylor’s pickup truck before falling to the ground in a heap, Saylor allegedly firing a shot into Merrill’s chest.
Saylor attempted to leave in his truck, collided with an Uber driver’s sedan, but ultimately fled west out of the parking lot, police said.
Merrill was pronounced dead at York Hospital at 1:50 a.m. Saylor was arrested later that morning at his residence, where he lived in his parents’ basement, police say, and charged with criminal homicide.
Saylor remains in York County Prison, awaiting a preliminary hearing.
So while the next chapter in Saylor’s life is on hold, the next for Grandison-Douglas is just beginning.
Jerrell Grandison-Douglas sits for a portrait after recalling the night that his friend, Chad Merrill, was shot for allegedly defending Grandison-Douglas from racial slurs. “Whether the story is told or not, you’re still going through [racism],” Grandison-Douglas said. “And you do whatever you can to protect yourself, whether it’s looking over your shoulder at all times or making sure you can see everybody in the bar, or making sure there’s no one behind you. It’s just something that’s ingrained into your being, and you just do it subconsciously. You don’t even think about it anymore.” (Ty Lohr/The York Daily Record)
A friendship of peace
Grandison-Douglas and his family moved to York County from Brentwood in Long Island, New York, around 2004.
While they escaped the violence of Brentwood, life in York County wasn’t exactly without peril.
With their skin color and dreadlocks, Grandison-Douglas and his brother faced almost daily racism in their youth.
School bus rides and dropoffs were the worst, he said, with classmates frequently verbally accosting them with racial slurs and sometimes spitting into their hair.
When Grandison-Douglas finally decided to fight back, he said, he was ambushed by three guys and beaten.
“That’s when I learned my lesson that violence wasn’t the answer,” he said, “because if I took a peaceful route, that wouldn’t have happened.”
A 2010 graduate of Central York High School, Grandison-Douglas began a path to success in high school, enjoying various studies, including the Japanese language, and participating in football and track and field.
“Despite what is going on and how people feel about it, there’s still a lot of opportunity here,” said Grandison-Douglas, who attended community college before embarking on his career.
“I’m still young, and I’m still trying to make a really good name for myself. And it’s a fantastic place to raise a child. I grew up here and I went to school here, and I’m growing and on a path to success because of it.”
Through mutual friends, he met Merrill four to five years ago. They discovered that, despite racial differences, they shared a lot of the same interests and philosophies. Both worked labor jobs, Grandison-Douglas as a machinist, Merrill as a mason.
In their group, Grandison-Douglas’ devotion to levelheadedness and nonviolence blended well with Merrill’s propensity to be peacemaker in any and all arguments, from sports to politics and everything in between.
“As long as everybody’s smiling, he’s having a good time,” Grandison-Douglas said in describing Merrill. “If there’s a problem, he’s always one of the first people to jump up and say I’m going to fix this. He’s that genuine. He’s the stereotypical definition of friend.”
The friendship really blossomed after Merrill sought Grandison-Douglas’ advice on impending fatherhood.
“The moment that child was born, he was proud, he was happy, and he wanted to be a dad,” Grandison-Douglas said of Merrill and his 5-month-old son, Layton.
The relationship gradually shifted from mostly hanging out among friends to “checking up on each other and making sure everything is OK” and sharing “the latest and greatest dad strategies.”
They hadn’t hung out in a few weeks before last Friday night, when they ran into each other at another bar and knew they’d reconnect later at the Red Rose.
Jerrell Grandison-Douglas said he never saw James Saylor before July 21, when Saylor repeatedly called him racial slurs and allegedly shot Chad Merrill in the chest. (Ty Lohr/The York Daily Record)
‘I feel responsible’
Since that night, Grandison-Douglas has barely slept.
His family, his girlfriend, his daughter, his friends. Merrill’s family. All have been available for support.
He’s tried to distract himself by reading. Sometimes work helps him escape the feelings.
But one particular feeling, as irrational as it might seem to an outsider, continues to eat away at him.
Guilt.
“It’s been very hard to continue living life knowing I still have to be a father, I still have to work, I still have to provide for my family,” he said. “It’s very difficult. I don’t get any peace.”
It’s crushing, he said, to keep reliving the moments of that night.
“I feel responsible. I do. Everybody can sit there and say it’s not my fault, I didn’t do anything. But the fact of the matter is this wouldn’t have happened if I wasn’t black and if I never walked into that bar. So I have to take some responsibility for my actions. … Those are just the thoughts that are going through my head. I know they’re irrational thoughts, but it’s the human response to a [expletive] situation.”
His answer to those feelings?
Sharing his side of the story. Standing up for Chad Merrill, because Chad Merrill wasted no time standing up for him.
“A lot of people do say they’re that type of friend or have ambitions of being that type of friend,” Grandison-Douglas said. “Chad just was. He didn’t have to say it; he just did it. He never had to prove his loyalty to anybody. He showed it every day in every minute of his life through his actions, and his actions spoke louder than anything he [said].”
As for Saylor, Grandison-Douglas still refuses to harbor any hate.
Almost from the moment he heard the first n-word spewed at him that night, and lasting through today, Grandison-Douglas just wants to find a connection to another human being, regardless of race, regardless of the sickening circumstances that now tie them together forever.
“I want to talk to him. I want to know if the hate was real, or was he just having a bad day?” Grandison-Douglas said. “Was it just something going through his mind? Did someone really hurt him? Did he have a bad experience with somebody else of color? Or was it just a random incident? I’d like to know what was going through his mind.
“Everyone has their story except him, and he does have a right to say his story.”
This story comes to us through a partnership between WITF and The York Daily Record.
A collection of interviews, photos, and music videos, featuring local musicians who have stopped by the WITF performance studio to share a little discussion and sound. Produced by WITF’s Joe Ulrich.
