In the early morning hours of June 22, 2025, the quiet of a New Orleans East street was broken by a grim discovery. A passerby reported a man down in the 5600 block of Morrison Road, and at approximately 2:40 a.m., police officers arrived to find a male victim who had been fatally shot. The man was identified as 43-year-old Ashley Aples, a Jefferson Parish corrections officer.
Aples, a father of three who had been with the sheriff's office for nearly two years, was not on duty at the time of his death. His family remembered him as a devoted dad and a beloved uncle with a passion for music and helping others.
The New Orleans Police Department's homicide detectives quickly took charge of the investigation. Initially, they sought two persons of interest for questioning, an adult Black male and an adult Black female. The investigation took a significant turn when detectives, in coordination with a local ankle monitoring service, positively identified the male person of interest as 20-year-old Jerroy Johnson. The female who had been sought was located and was no longer considered a person of interest in the case. Surveillance footage and evidence from the ankle monitor Johnson was wearing linked him to the scene of the crime.
On June 26, 2025, Jerroy Johnson was arrested without incident in Slidell, Louisiana, by the U.S. Marshals Service with assistance from local law enforcement. He was subsequently charged with second-degree murder, aggravated battery, and a weapons charge. His total bond was set at $1 million for the murder charge and $250,000 for the weapons charge, with a separate amount for the aggravated battery. The investigation revealed that Johnson was also wanted in connection with another shooting that had occurred on June 1, 2025, also on Morrison Road.
The arrest brought to light troubling questions about the oversight of the ankle monitoring system. Johnson had been wearing the electronic ankle bracelet as a condition of his release on previous armed robbery charges. It was discovered that an arrest warrant for Johnson in connection with the June 1 shooting had been issued on June 3, weeks before Aples's death. This led to criticism that authorities missed a crucial opportunity to apprehend Johnson, a failure that Aples's family believes could have prevented his 'senseless murder.' In the wake of this tragedy, the New Orleans Police Department stated its intention to reevaluate its partnerships with monitoring services to improve accountability and information sharing.
