Uniqua Caldwell, a 27-year-old Black/African American female from Dover, Delaware, died in the first minutes of July 8, 2020, after what first appeared to police as a crash at South DuPont Highway and Loockerman Street. Just after midnight, officers were called to the intersection because a black Dodge Challenger had struck a sign on the northwest corner.
When they reached the vehicle, the scene changed from a traffic crash into a homicide investigation: Caldwell was found in the driver's seat with a gunshot wound to the head.
She was still alive when emergency help arrived and was taken by ambulance to Kent General Hospital, but she was later pronounced dead from her injuries. Witnesses told police they saw two people, described as a male and a female, get out of the Challenger and run away on foot heading east. In the hours after the shooting, Dover police asked the public for tips while detectives worked to determine who had been inside the car and what had happened before it struck the sign.
For months, the case remained under investigation. Police eventually developed Heivyn Johnson, then 17, as a suspect in Caldwell's shooting death. On April 15, 2021, Dover police and the U.S. Marshals First State Fugitive Task Force located Johnson during a separate firearms investigation connected to a residence in the 300 block of Harmony Lane in Dover. After Johnson was taken into custody on those separate firearms matters, detectives also charged Johnson in connection with Caldwell's death.
The charges announced in the Caldwell case included manslaughter, possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony, three counts of possession of a firearm or ammunition by a person prohibited, and carrying a concealed deadly weapon. Johnson was committed to Stevenson Juvenile Detention Center on a $60,000 cash bond. Although witnesses had originally reported seeing both a male and a female flee from the crash scene, the available online records identify Johnson as the arrested suspect in Caldwell's death and do not show that the unidentified male witness-described person was publicly charged in the case.
The case later moved beyond the initial manslaughter charge. Court records show Johnson pleaded guilty to criminally negligent homicide as a lesser-included offense of manslaughter, along with possession of a firearm by a person prohibited. As part of the plea agreement, Johnson consented to being prosecuted as an adult in Superior Court, while the state dismissed other weapon- and drug-related charges.
Johnson was sentenced to eight years in prison for criminally negligent homicide. For the firearm-prohibited conviction, Johnson received another eight-year sentence, suspended after five years for decreasing levels of supervision. Johnson appealed, but in January 2023 the Delaware Supreme Court affirmed the Superior Court's judgment after concluding the appeal had no arguable merit.
