BAY MINETTE – A Bay Minette man who was one of two people who came into the Baldwin County Sheriff’s Office to report a homicide has been charged with murder, according to a department statement.
On Sunday, Jan. 16, a man and woman walked into the docket room at the Baldwin County Corrections Center at about 10:30 a.m. The two told employees that a person had been killed in the unincorporated community of Perdido east of Bay Minette.
The employees called a deputy to the docket room and the two were held until the report could be checked, the statement said.
Deputies went to the reported address of the incident in the 53000 block of Cemetery Road in Perdido. They found Cody Taylor, 24, who had been shot and killed.
Ethan Branum, 23, of Bay Minette, the man who had come to the docket room, was arrested and charged with murder. He was also charge with unlawful imprisonment, first-degree burglary and menacing, the statement said.
The woman who reported the death was described as a witness and was not charged.
Branum is in the Baldwin County Sheriff's Corrections Center with his bond set at $259,000, according to jail reports. The investigation is continuing and no other details were available, the statement said.
