Willa Taylor has had a rough month. Her husband had a seizure, was taken to the hospital and later died. When he was in his hospital bed, she says one of the paramedics that brought him there returned to their Rancho Bernardo home and tried to break in.
On the morning of July 4, Taylor said she was getting ready to return to the hospital to see her husband when she heard a noise coming from the back of their home. She testified that she saw a man remove a screen and try to open a window. The window was locked, so Taylor testified she watched the man move to a sliding glass door, which was also locked.
She decided to confront him. “I asked him what he was doing," she testified. “He said, 'Don’t you remember me? I was here last night.'”
Get top local stories in San Diego delivered to you every morning. >Sign up for NBC San Diego's News Headlines newsletter.
Taylor testified she didn’t look at the faces of the half-dozen or so firefighters and paramedics who swarmed into the bedroom she shared with her husband the night he fell ill, but she did recognize Nicholas Conniry as the man who tried to break into their home the next morning wearing his Falck Paramedic uniform with his name clearly embroidered on the chest of his shirt.
Taylor said she didn’t believe Conniry when he told her he had returned to the home to gather some information for his report about the previous night’s medical call at her home. She refused to let him in.
A neighbor confronted Conniry, who returned to the house a second time that morning. That’s when Taylor called the police.
Conniry was arrested for burglary, but when officers went to the firehouse where he worked, they found evidence that he may have been involved in other criminal activity. Medical records of dozens of patients were found in his personal locker. On the back of one of those records, someone had written Taylor’s address.
Detectives searched Conniry’s white pick-up and said they found a black backpack with two vials of fentanyl and loaded handguns.
Searches of two of Conniry’s homes in Temecula and San Diego uncovered several other guns, including assault rifles, ammunition, and gun parts and tools used in the assembly of ghost guns, testimony showed.
Judge Kimberlee Lagotta ruled there was enough evidence to hold Conniry over for trial.
Conniry remains held without bail in the San Diego County Jail. If convicted of the five felonies and a misdemeanor count against him, he could face a maximum of 10 years and four months in prison.
