On a rainy Sunday evening in Newark’s Vailsburg section, 46-year-old Black / African American man Al-Tariq Johnson stepped into or near the small corner store at 899 18th Avenue, along the 800 block near Columbia Avenue, a stretch of the West Ward long marked by tense street traffic and open-air dealing. A gunman appeared and opened fire, targeting several people in and around the shop. Gunshots shattered the ordinary rhythm of the block just after 8 p.m.; by the time the echoes faded, three men lay wounded on the pavement and inside the store.
Behind the name on the crime reports was a man deeply rooted in Newark and neighboring East Orange. Johnson was the only child of Geraldine Johnson and Leon Brown, both deceased, and he grew up in the city’s public schools before spending time at Job Corps in Edison, trying to build a steadier future. He worked at RP Baking LLC in nearby Harrison, part of the quiet working life that supported his family.
From the age of 11 he was rarely without a notebook, filling page after page with rap lyrics and poetry; later he joined a local rap group and performed under the stage name “Nonsense,” while friends and online memorials also remembered him with nicknames like “No. 9” and “Ninesense.”
Those closest to him remembered that, more than music or work, his daughter mattered most. Obituary notices describe her as his greatest accomplishment and the driving force behind his life, the person he measured his efforts and hopes against. Extended family, including his grandmother Mary Rivera and his aunt Safiyya Sharif, were left to carry his memory forward. Within days of his killing, a Janazah prayer service was held for him at Masjid NIA on Roseville Avenue in Newark, followed by burial at Restland Memorial Cemetery in East Hanover, rituals that marked both his faith and his family’s determination to give him a dignified farewell despite the violent way his life ended.
On April 30, 2023, the night unfolded quickly. At about 8:09 p.m., Newark police were dispatched to the 800 block of 18th Avenue after reports of gunfire; officers and prosecutors later said they found three men suffering from gunshot wounds when they arrived. Johnson was pronounced dead at the scene at 8:26 p.m., while the other two victims were rushed to University Hospital, where at least one was initially listed in intensive care. In one account, investigators learned that a gunman had fired at two people inside the store at 899 18th Avenue; another detailed how a third person at the scene was hurt in the chaos but was not actually shot. The killing was counted as Newark’s fifteenth homicide of 2023, a grim number that underscored how familiar the West Ward had become with sudden bursts of violence.
In the hours and days that followed, detectives from the Essex County Prosecutor’s Office Homicide/Major Crimes Task Force and Newark police combed the rain-soaked block for shell casings and surveillance footage, working under harsh weather to piece together what had happened. Public statements from prosecutors and local media described an armed suspect who fled after the shooting, but they did not name any individual or spell out a clear motive. Appeals went out repeatedly for witnesses to come forward, with the prosecutor’s tip line broadcast in news reports and on regional television. Even as time passed, a dedicated case page on a national crime-tracking site continued to list Johnson’s death as a “death by force” case with no suspect identified, and forum posts there in 2023 and beyond noted with frustration that no arrests had yet been announced.
Online memorials slowly filled with candles, photos, and short notes, trying to reclaim Johnson from the anonymity of a crime statistic. Visitors described him as “real” and marked his page with his chosen nicknames, while local obituaries focused on his artistic ambitions, his devotion to his daughter, and the small family circle that had already endured so much loss. They painted the picture of a man who carried his rhymes everywhere, who balanced a day job with a restless creative drive, and who still ended up caught in the kind of gunfire that has scarred so many corners of Newark. As of the latest public updates, the investigation into the 18th Avenue shooting that took his life remains open, the space outside that corner store standing as both a crime scene and the last known place he was seen alive.
