In a quiet New Windsor neighborhood, a long-simmering dispute between neighbors erupted into a fatal act of violence on the morning of April 8, 2026. Larome A. Johnson, a 57-year-old retired corrections officer, was shot multiple times outside his home on Hawthorn Way just before 9 a.m. Police and emergency responders arrived to find Johnson with multiple gunshot wounds. They administered life-saving measures and transported him to Montefiore St. Luke's Cornwall Hospital, but he was later pronounced dead. The shooting marked the first homicide in the town of New Windsor in six years.
The tragedy was compounded by a heartbreaking detail: Johnson and his family were scheduled to close on a new home just an hour after the shooting occurred. Friends and family remembered the man known as “Tone” as a devoted husband and father who had overcome both cancer and COVID. A GoFundMe campaign was established to assist his family with funeral expenses.
At the scene, police took 47-year-old Thomas J. Crews, Johnson's neighbor, into custody. He was subsequently charged with second-degree murder. Investigators believe the shooting was the culmination of a "long-standing dispute" between the two men. Police records indicated at least one prior dispute between the neighbors at The Grove townhouse complex approximately three years earlier.
Crews was arraigned and remanded to the Orange County Jail without bail. At the time of his arraignment, which took place at his hospital bedside, he was being treated for a possible heart attack. Town Supervisor Stephen Bedetti described the incident as a "heartbreaking tragedy." The investigation into the shooting remains ongoing, with authorities reassuring the public that it was an isolated incident with no further threat.
