On the evening of December 30, 2021, Leterik Lee Johenkins, a 33-year-old Black male, was standing outside a home at 114 North Oak Street in Ocilla, Georgia, when gunfire tore through the night in what investigators described as a drive-by shooting. He was killed there, and another man, James White, was wounded but survived. The violence came fast and without much warning in the public record, leaving Johenkins at the center of a chain of events that turned a neighborhood shooting into a wider manhunt stretching across South Georgia.
According to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, the shooting that killed Johenkins happened only minutes after another attack in Ocilla. At 6:41 p.m., shots were fired at Shane Clowers while he sat in his car at the Citgo on North Irvin Avenue, but he was not hit. Investigators later said they believed the same man was responsible for that shooting, for the attack that killed Johenkins and injured White, and for what happened next in Douglas. About half an hour later, authorities said Johnny C. Martin Jr., 36, of Ocilla, went to a gas station in the 3900 block of Highway 158 West in Douglas, carjacked a woman, and fired at her while taking her vehicle, though she was not injured. From there, law enforcement spotted the stolen car and a chase followed into Nicholls, where Martin drove into a field off Martinez Lane. When officers reached the vehicle, they found him dead with a gunshot wound to the head and a gun in his hand; investigators said they suspected the wound was self-inflicted.
That meant the case moved in a grim direction almost immediately: the man authorities identified as the suspect died before any arrest on the homicide itself could be carried through to court. The GBI said it believed Martin had shot Johenkins, White, and Clowers before the carjacking and chase, and the agency described the investigation as active and ongoing at the time of its public release. In the online reporting available, no additional suspects were publicly identified, and there is no indication of a later trial or conviction tied to Johenkins’s death. What remains in the record is the picture of a sudden burst of violence across multiple scenes, ending the same night with Johenkins dead, another man wounded, and the suspected gunman gone before the case could ever be tested in a courtroom.
