Caleb O'Neal Johnson, an 18-year-old male, was a senior at Edna Karr High School with plans to join the U.S. Navy after graduation. He was a football player and was on the homecoming court his junior year. Just weeks away from graduating, his life was cut short.
On March 28, 2021, in the Algiers neighborhood of New Orleans, Johnson was in a vehicle with his 25-year-old stepsister, Breyiana Brown, and his girlfriend at the Cypress Run Apartments.
Police believe they were there to sell a gun to a man. For reasons that are not entirely clear, the man opened fire on the vehicle. Both Johnson and Brown were fatally wounded in the shooting, while Johnson's girlfriend was injured but survived.
The investigation into the double homicide led police to 21-year-old Hollis Carter. Carter reportedly confessed to the murders and was subsequently arrested. He was charged with two counts of second-degree murder and one count of attempted second-degree murder and was eventually released on a $375,000 bond. Carter's defense attorney later claimed that the confession was false and made under duress, stating that Carter was afraid of the actual killer.
A year later, on March 23, 2022, a dramatic and violent turn of events unfolded. As Hollis Carter and his mother were on their way to a pretrial hearing for his case, a gunman in a Ford F-150 pulled alongside their vehicle at the intersection of Chef Menteur Highway and Providence Place and opened fire. Carter was killed, and his mother was critically wounded in the attack.
Surveillance footage of the shooting led investigators to identify the vehicle's license plate, which was registered to Bokio B. Johnson, the 46-year-old father of Caleb Johnson. He was arrested and charged with second-degree murder and attempted second-degree murder, the same charges Carter had faced. The trial for Bokio Johnson was reportedly underway as of June 2024, with jurors hearing testimony from detectives and family members in what has been described as a case of retaliatory violence.
