Kameron Young Johnson, a 27-year-old white male from Casper, Wyoming, spent his final day riding in a red Honda with two people he knew well: his longtime friend Luke Thomas Young and nineteen-year-old Acacia Colvin. The three had set out from Casper on August 9, 2022, driving through small Wyoming towns in the Basin area to deliver fentanyl, with both men armed as they moved from Worland to Basin and back toward home.
According to later court testimony and Young's own account, the trip was tense; the men argued bitterly, and Colvin repeatedly messaged friends and family that she felt unsafe and wanted someone to come get her.
As night settled over U.S. Highway 20/26 west of Casper, near the Natrona County Airport, the Honda came up behind a motorcycle ridden by Kyle Stalkup. Around 11 p.m., Stalkup pulled his “slow” bike to the side to let the car pass, only to see it suddenly jerk to the right as if it had struck a deer. When he slowed to check on the occupants, a young woman—Colvin—ran from the car, dropped to her knees in the road, and screamed into the open driver's side door. A man later identified as Luke Young climbed from the rear passenger side, drew a. 40-caliber handgun, and racked a round. Stalkup saw what looked like a man already slumped in the front seat with a gunshot wound to the head before Young thrust the pistol toward him. Stalkup “dumped the clutch” and sped away into the darkness, calling 911 as a volley of additional gunshots cracked behind him.
Deputies from the Natrona County Sheriff's Office responded to reports of a shooting on that stretch of Highway 20/26 and arrived to find a stark, silent scene. Colvin lay face-down by the passenger side of the car, surrounded by blood spatter, fresh bullet divots, and fragments in the dirt. Inside the Honda, Johnson sat lifeless in the front passenger seat, his shoes off, dead from a single gunshot wound to the head; when the coroner later removed his body, a 9 mm pistol was found stashed behind his right leg, suggesting he had never managed to draw it in time. Investigators also recovered suspected methamphetamine and a needle bearing possible fentanyl residue inside the vehicle. By the next day, the Natrona County Coroner's Office publicly identified the two victims as Kameron Young Johnson and Acacia Colvin, both from Casper, and scheduled autopsies as the community began to learn that a double homicide had taken place along a familiar road.
Luke Young was already on the radar of law enforcement. Days before the shootings, he had walked away from an Adult Community Corrections work-release program in Campbell County, where he was serving a three-to-five-year sentence for unlawful manufacture or delivery of Schedule I or II drugs; a Department of Corrections warrant for felony escape had been issued on August 5. After the killings, the sheriff's office warned residents not to pick up hitchhikers, describing Young as armed, dangerous, and a person of interest. A citizen eventually reported someone matching his description hopping fences near 7 Mile Road and 6WN Road outside Casper on the afternoon of August 10. Deputies converged, arrested Young without incident, and booked him into jail on the escape warrant while investigators worked through the emerging evidence that tied him to the double homicide.
Over the following weeks, that evidence solidified. Investigators found Young's driver's license in the back-seat armrest of the Honda, and witness statements and phone records painted a picture of two former prison friends whose renewed relationship had spiraled into violence on a drug run. At first, Young was officially described as a “person of interest,” but on August 25, 2022, the Natrona County Sheriff's Office announced that he would be charged with two counts of first-degree murder for the deaths of Johnson and Colvin and one count of aggravated assault for pointing the gun at Stalkup. The case was bound over from circuit court after a preliminary hearing in which an investigator detailed the shooting scene, the victims' wounds, and Colvin's desperate calls and texts seeking a way out of the car that day.
In January 2023, Young entered not-guilty pleas in Natrona County District Court, but the story changed when he stood before Judge Joshua Eames on March 3. High on methamphetamine and irritated by what he described as his companions' whispering, Young told the court that after the trio had spent the day dealing fentanyl and using meth, he confronted Johnson and Colvin about talking up front. He said he asked to get out of the car, was refused, and finally pulled his gun. In his own words, Johnson mocked the weapon, reached toward the gun he kept under his leg, and Young fired first. After Colvin pulled over and stepped out, Young pointed the gun at Stalkup to drive the motorcyclist away, then turned and shot Colvin multiple times before fleeing into the night. By admitting to both killings and the armed confrontation with the witness, Young pleaded guilty to two counts of first-degree murder and one count of aggravated assault, trading a possible death penalty for the certainty of spending the rest of his life in prison.
At a sentencing hearing in June 2023, the courtroom filled with the voices of the families Johnson and Colvin left behind. Johnson's mother described the depth of her grief and the betrayal she felt knowing her son had considered Young a brother from their time together in a Wyoming youth “boot camp” program, while Colvin's family spoke of the two young boys who would grow up without their mother. After weighing both the harm done and testimony about Young's troubled childhood, Judge Eames imposed two concurrent life sentences for the murders and an additional three-to-five-year sentence for aggravated assault, also concurrent, along with more than twelve thousand dollars in restitution. With that judgment, the criminal case over the killings along Highway 20/26 formally closed: the man responsible for the gunshot that left Kameron Young Johnson lifeless in the front seat of a red Honda now committed to spend his life under the custody of the state.
