Saturday, Feb. 11, 2012

COLUMBIA CTY., Ga. -- Investigators have arrested 46-year-old Yvette Taylor for a murder on Applecross Drive in Martinez.

The call came in around 8:30 a.m. Saturday. EMS and Columbia County deputies were dispatched to Applecross Apartments, expecting to find a death by natural causes. The blood splattered in the living room painted a different picture.

According to reports, Taylor told investigators she left the apartment around 1:30 a.m. Saturday because Theodore Crew was speaking "foolishness." She then left and went to a neighbor's apartment below hers.

The neighbor says Taylor asked her for a ride to the store and then went back upstairs.

The neighbor's son, Demarcus Griffith, says, "I went upstairs to tell her that my mama was ready to go."

And that's when the boy says Taylor suddenly changed her mind and shut the door. Investigators asked the boy what he saw when he went upstairs.

"He asked me, did she open the door wide or was it just a little bit cracked? And it was just a little bit cracked," Griffith said.

Taylor says she then went to her mother's house, also in the same complex, where she stayed the night.

Her mother did not want to be on camera, but she wanted people to know her daughter is, "...a loving type person. She loved to help other people."

And the neighbors agree.

Robert Rodriguez lives in the same building as Taylor. He says she is, "...a very nice lady. Always took care of the neighborhood kids."

Taylor says she returned around 8 a.m. on Saturday to find crew on the bathroom floor and called 911.

Rodriguez says the Applecross community is, "..a quiet neighborhood, nothing bad ever happens here. To hear this was a big shock."

An autopsy performed Sunday determined the cause of death to be blunt force trauma to the head and body. Taylor was arrested Saturday afternoon and is charged with murder, according to the Columbia County Sheriff's Office.

This is not Taylor's first brush with the law. She was released in November of 2002 from the Georgia Department of Corrections where she was serving a sentence for involuntary manslaughter.

This is Columbia County's first murder for 2012.