Nineteen-year-old Raekwon Manigault was killed in a mass shooting on August 19, 2015, in Rochester, New York. The incident occurred outside the Boys & Girls Club on Genesee Street, where a crowd had gathered after a basketball game. Manigault, along with two other young men, Jonah Barley, 17, and Johnny Johnson, 25, died from gunfire. Four other people were wounded in the attack.
The investigation led police to identify 21-year-old Johnny Blackshell Jr. as the shooter.
Authorities stated that Blackshell used an AK-47 to fire into the crowd. Less than a week after the killings, Blackshell, who was on parole at the time, was arrested. Prosecutors believed the shooting was gang-related and that Blackshell was associated with a gang known as the 'Maroon Goons.'
In June 2016, a jury found Johnny Blackshell Jr. guilty of three counts of first-degree murder. He was also convicted on three counts of assault and two counts of criminal possession of a weapon. For the murder convictions, Blackshell was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Two other men who were charged in connection with the shooting were later acquitted. One of those men, Jalen Everett, was himself shot and killed in a separate incident in May 2019. In addition to his state sentence, Blackshell also pleaded guilty to federal charges of Hobbs Act Robbery and brandishing a firearm in relation to a separate convenience store robbery that occurred just days before the mass shooting.
