Erin Nichole Johnson, a 39-year-old woman from Sheridan, Wyoming, built a quiet life that revolved around her son and her art. Raised in Sheridan, she went through the local schools and graduated from Sheridan High School before earning a bachelor’s degree in history. In the years that followed, she tried different paths before discovering a talent for jewelry making.
What began as a creative outlet turned into a small business, with Erin selling her handmade necklaces and other pieces online, which allowed her to work from home and be present for her son, Owen. Friends and family later described her as kind, funny, intelligent, free-spirited and deeply devoted to the people she loved, especially her boy.
Her home on Mydland Road, a modest mobile residence on the west side of Sheridan, became the center of that world. There, she and 13-year-old Owen shared everyday routines and small adventures: camping trips, travel when they could manage it, and the steady rhythm of school, work, and late nights with music and crafts spread across the table. Those who knew Erin remembered her as fiercely protective of her son and proud of the life they had carved out together. The obituary written months later, in the sober language of grief, emphasized not the way she died, but how she lived: a creative and musical spirit, a devoted mother, daughter, and friend whose family was proud of the woman she had become.
What happened inside that home in late 2022 was pieced together only after the fact. Sheridan County Coroner Robert Byrd later concluded that Erin and Owen died on December 22, 2022, at their residence in Sheridan, fixing that date as the actual day of death after investigators reconstructed the timeline. For nearly two weeks, no one outside the home seems to have realized what had occurred. It wasn’t until the evening of January 6, 2023, when a caller reported a water leak and said they hadn’t been able to reach the occupants, that police were dispatched for a welfare check to Lot 138 at 1511 Mydland Road.
Officers from the Sheridan Police Department arrived at around 6:52 p.m. that Friday. Seeing the apparent leak and unable to contact anyone inside, they determined there were exigent circumstances and forced entry into the single-family mobile home. Inside, they found the body of an adult female and a juvenile male. From the outset, authorities treated the scene as a double homicide. Early releases from law enforcement and regional media reported that the deaths appeared to be caused by gunfire, and that the Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation’s crime lab had been called in to process the residence.
In the days that followed, the public slowly learned the names behind the clinical language of those first statements. On January 14, 2023, the coroner formally identified the victims as 39-year-old Erin Johnson and her 13-year-old son, Owen Lawson, confirming that their deaths were homicides. Gun violence tracking sites and memorial pages subsequently listed Erin as having been “lost to gun violence” in Sheridan, echoing those official findings and tying her name to the broader national ledger of shooting victims. Even as family and friends prepared a celebration of life service for March 18, 2023, at a local church, the investigation into how and why the killings occurred continued in the background.
From the start, investigators signaled that they had focused on a single suspect. Both Sheridan-area coverage and regional television reports stated that the initial follow-up investigation identified one suspect connected to the double homicide. Crucially, that person was reported to have been found dead in Colorado, and authorities assured the community there was no ongoing danger. Because the suspect died before being taken into custody, there are no public records of an arrest, formal charges, or a trial stemming from the killings of Erin and Owen. Available reports do not name the suspect or describe their relationship to the victims, and coroner and alumni notices from Sheridan simply note that the investigation was being handled jointly by the Sheridan Police Department and the Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation’s crime lab.
With the suspected perpetrator already deceased, the story of what happened inside the home on Mydland Road remains largely locked in sealed case files and quiet recollections, rather than courtroom testimony. In the public record, Erin is remembered far more for her life than for the violence that ended it: as a mother who built a small business so she could be near her son, as a creative soul with music and jewelry at her fingertips, and as a beloved member of the Sheridan community whose absence still echoes in the memories of those who knew her.
