DeKalb County police have closed the investigation into the shooting death of Roxanne Nicole Taylor – known briefly as the “grandma bandit – and the officers involved will not be charged, the department said Tuesday.
Atlanta police officers, who were not named, on Friday chased Taylor’s gold Jeep up Interstate 85 and on to North Druid Hills, where the SUV crashed. Initially police said Taylor had shot himself. An APD spokesman initially reported Taylor was a woman.
The officers have been placed on paid administrative leave, an APD spokeswoman said.
“The gunshot that killed Roxanne Taylor was not self-inflicted,” DeKalb spokeswoman Mekka Parish said in an email Tuesday. “No charges are anticipated against the two officers that were involved. The case is considered closed.”
The DeKalb County Medical Examiner’s Office said Tuesday it would be several weeks before the autopsy findings are released because the toxicology report has not been completed. The office would not release any information until then.
The chase started after Taylor was spotted in the drive-thru lane of a Wendy’s restaurant on Piedmont Avenue near an entrance to northbound I-85.
Taylor, dubbed the "grandma bandit," was linked to string of drug store robberies in Atlanta and DeKalb County but several hours after the fatal crash officials corrected reports that Taylor was a woman.
Taylor was born 57 years ago as Donald H. Ellis Jr. of Alabama, records show.
Ellis became Roxanne Taylor in the mid 1990s but the gender transition was apparently in name only.
Taylor, a fixed-wing and helicopter pilot, changed his name on his certification with the Federal Aviation Administration in 1996, according to a spokeswoman. Taylor, then known as Ellis, started flying small planes in 1977 and was certified to fly helicopters in 2001.
Taylor last updated his FAA medical certificate in 2006 but has not renewed the required two-year certification since, according to FAA spokeswoman Kathleen Bergen.
The reason for the name change are unclear. Repeated efforts to reach relatives still in Huntsville, Ala., were unsuccessful.
Taylor’s face -- which resembled a puffy, middle-aged woman -- became familiar when he was captured on store surveillance cameras. Each time he wore a black University of Georgia ball cap.
The clerks at each store also said Taylor had a hand gun hidden in a black billfold. The weapon was never taken out when he demanded money; he simply showed the clerk the weapon.
At one store, Taylor apologized and said he was dying of cancer but that has not been confirmed.
“Don’t be scared,” Taylor said during one of the robberies, according to police. “Just give me all the money in the cash drawer.”
Court records show Taylor was having financial problems last fall. In September, the company that owned Mattress Lofts, where he lived, began the process of evicting him. It also filed a motion in Fulton County Magistrate Court, saying he owed $2,133.
According to business records, Taylor once worked for Atlanta Aviation Graphics in an office and warehouse complex near Grant Park. But the property owner said Friday the company left the space at least two years ago.
And according to a consumer website that tracks fraud, Taylor also at one time owned a website development company. Several people on the site reported that Taylor cheated them out of thousands of dollars, by not delivering what he promised in initially contracts. One man said after he complained, he received a series of threatening emails from Taylor, as well as a Google image of his home.
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