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It began with a bank robbery Wednesday afternoon in Avilla and ended six hours later with a fatal police action shooting in Fort Wayne.
Police from multiple departments tracked the holdup suspect nearly 30 miles through three counties, barely missing him at some of his stops.
Avilla Police Chief Glen Wills identified the robbery suspect as Anthony Taylor but did not release an age or hometown. Fort Wayne police on Thursday said he was 37 and from Bluffton.
The second police-action shooting in Fort Wayne in about a week remains under investigation.
Fort Wayne officers received information from Avilla that the robbery suspect was traveling in a taxicab and headed for a business on Fort Wayne's northeast side, Fort Wayne police spokesman Michael Joyner said.
At 1:10 p.m., the suspect, carrying a black duffle bag and armed with an AR-15-style assault rifle, walked into People's Federal Bank, 105 N. Main St. in Avilla, and demanded money, according to Avilla police.
The robber left the bank and stole a customer's minivan in the parking lot. The Avilla woman and her small child were ordered out of their tan 2002 Pontiac Montana at gunpoint.
The robber then left the parking lot in the stolen van and headed south, police said.
From Avilla, the man drove to LaOtto, where he dumped the minivan at the sewer ponds and went to his sister's home on Indiana 205, Wills said.
The man's sister told police he ordered her at gunpoint to drive him back to his car in Avilla, but it was not there.
About 20 to 30 minutes before the robbery, an Avilla officer noticed a man with a backpack and a black duffel bag walk away from a car parked in the St. Mary's Church lot near the bank.
After the robbery, the officer realized he had likely seen the robber and Avilla police impounded the car, an early 1990s Mercedes, Wills said.
When the man and his sister reached the parking lot, he realized police had gotten to his car, so he had his sister drive him to the Wal-Mart parking lot at Lima and Dupont roads in Fort Wayne, Wills said.
Avilla police, after receiving information about the suspect's possible whereabouts, arrived at his sister's LaOtto home only to find that he had left for Avilla. Wills estimated they missed him by fewer than 40 minutes.
From the Wal-Mart parking lot, the suspect walked to the nearby Buffalo Wild Wings and called a taxicab, Wills said.
About 7 p.m., Fort Wayne police caught up with the suspect in the cab as it was heading south on Lima Road.
Officers followed it until it turned into the Marathon gas station on North Clinton Street, police said.
Officers conducted a traffic stop of the cab about 7:15 p.m., at which point the man got out of the cab carrying a black duffel bag in one hand and a handgun in the other, Joyner said.
He ignored officers' commands to drop what was in his hands and walked away from the cab, west toward the Aspen Dental at 720 Coliseum Blvd. E. and the adjacent Centennial Wireless store.
The man then turned and pointed the handgun at officers - at which point police shot him. He was taken to Parkview Hospital in critical condition where he died, Joyner said.
The shooting, which occurred within sight of Memorial Coliseum, was a bizarre addition to a night that found Fort Wayne residents sliding through snow-packed streets across the city.
Kyla Denton, 19, works at the Verizon Wireless store nearby. She had no idea what happened less than an hour before within sight of her workplace.
Given the weather, she assumed the police activity had a more mundane explanation.
"I just thought it was a car crash," she said.
This is the second fatal police-action shooting to occur in the past eight days.
On Jan. 7, a police sniper shot and killed Stephen Thompson when he walked out of his Kenwood Avenue home, and pointed a shotgun at officers after threatening to harm them, kill himself and blow up the neighborhood.
