Mike Texter had been best friends with Jan and Michael Roseboro’s oldest child, Sam, for the past year. Mike had graduated just over a month ago from Cocalico High School and was planning to attend classes at Penn State Berks that coming fall, his focus on kinesiology, the science of studying the physical activity, or “movements,” of human beings. On July 22, 2008, after he got out of work at 9:00 P.M., Mike headed over to one of his favorite places these days, the Roseboro residence, arriving somewhere near nine-thirty.
“I went there every night,” Mike said later, “to hang out with Sam.”
Mike parked his car in the gravel section of the driveway near the pool.
Sam met his friend outside. “What’s up?”
“Hey,” Mike said. After being let in, he walked around the pool toward the screened-in porch. “Hello, Mr. and Mrs. Roseboro,” he said to Michael and Jan, who were sitting near each other on the concrete deck, poolside. All the lights were on. The night sky was brilliant. You could still count the stars with your finger. The moon glowed; pending rain clouds not yet visible.
Mike and Samuel headed into the pool house, grabbed something to eat, watched a little television, and headed back out to the patio after another friend came by and asked if they wanted to go swimming at a fourth friend’s house down the road.
As they left, Mike Texter later recalled in court, it was about 10:05 P.M. Michael Roseboro was sitting on the steps inside the pool, his arms out along the edge, half his body underwater, the other half above the waterline, the multicolored pool lights underwater shining on him.
“As far as I can remember,” Mike said, “… [his] chest would have been exposed out of the water, swimming trunks, legs, would have been in.”
Jan was lying on the ground in back of her husband, seemingly content with the wonder of such a glorious night. All the lights were on, Mike said. The tiki lamps, the pool lights, the dawn-to-dusk floodlight out in back of the house hanging off the garage like a kitchen faucet.
“See you later,” the kids said to Jan and Michael.
They left.
After swimming for an hour, as they were getting ready to head out to McDonald’s for a late-night snack, Mike Texter and Sam Roseboro heard sirens and wondered what was going on in town. Then Sam got word that an ambulance was at his house, so he and Mike took off.
Pulling up, seeing everyone milling about the Roseboros’ backyard, Sam wondered what had happened.
One of the first things Mike Texter noticed as he walked up was that Michael Roseboro was wearing those same red swim trunks he had on while sitting in the water a little over an hour earlier. Here was a kid prone to noticing those light shades of human behavior that many of us take for granted.
Asked later what Roseboro was wearing, which would become a key issue in the weeks and months ahead, Mike said, “I believe they were red swim trunks…. To my knowledge, the same red swim trunks [he was wearing before] I left.”
Realizing that Jan Roseboro was in an ambulance on her way to the hospital, fighting for her life, Sam Roseboro and Mike Texter ran into the house to find out what had happened.