In the cold of a December night in Omaha, Nebraska, the life of Derek Johnson, a 27-year-old Black male, was tragically cut short. On December 21, 2014, Johnson was one of four people in a car when it was suddenly riddled with bullets. The relentless gunfire, captured on security cameras in the north Omaha neighborhood, turned a regular evening into a scene of devastating violence. When the shooting stopped, Johnson and another man, 28-year-old Jermaine Richey, were dead.
Two other men in the vehicle were wounded but survived the brutal attack.
The investigation that followed painted a grim picture of the assault. Law enforcement determined that an assailant had used an assault rifle, firing approximately 30 rounds into the car carrying the four victims. The sheer number of shots indicated a deliberate and violent intent. The search for the person responsible for the double homicide and the attempted murders of the two survivors became a priority for the Omaha police.
Justice for Derek Johnson and Jermaine Richey came in July 2016. A jury found 22-year-old Harold Baker guilty of the crimes. He was convicted on two counts of first-degree murder for the deaths of Johnson and Richey. In addition, Baker was found guilty on two counts of attempted murder for injuring the other two occupants of the car, and he was also convicted on four related weapons counts. For his actions on that December night, Harold Baker was sentenced to a mandatory life term in prison, closing the legal chapter on a violent event that claimed two young lives.
