Marquez Taylor, 21, has been indicted for the murder of Bainbridge Food Mart clerk Datta Dave on Oct. 15, 2008.
Taylor is being charged for felony murder, aggravated assault and criminal attempt to commit a felony. His indictment is a result of a five-year investigation with the Georgia Bureau of Investigations, Bainbridge Public Safety, Decatur County Sheriff’s Office and the South Georgia Judicial Circuit.
GBI Agent Mike Walsingham and BPS Captain Mark Esquivel were the primary officers on the case.
“We just kept taking nibbles on it little by little,” Esquivel said. “We’ve flipped over a lot of stones. A lot of those stones had nothing under them.”
Their investigation of Dave’s murder, however, did lead to the arrest of at least 10 other criminals unrelated to the case.
“We followed other leads of people who just got in our way,” Esquivel said. “This case has taken us everywhere. We’ve been to Atlanta. We’ve been to Jacksonville. (Walsingham) even went up to Idaho interviewing people.”
Taylor is currently in jail for the murder of 29-year-old James C. Christian near Fowlstown in April 2009, where he was charged with voluntary manslaughter. His court date for Dave’s murder is undecided.
On Oct. 15, 2008, BPS responded to a call at 10 p.m. of an armed robbery and shots fired at Bainbridge Food Mart on Shotwell Street. When the reporting officer entered the store, he found Dave lying behind the counter with a gunshot wound to the chest.
Witnesses said Taylor, 16-years-old at the time, was wearing a black hood over his face and demanding money from the cash register. Dave froze behind the counter. Taylor fired a round at her chest and then fled the scene.
“(Walsingham) did a great job of presenting the evidence to a judge to get Taylor indicted,” Esquivel said.