On the cold evening of February 18, 2022, the life of 14-year-old Black / African American male Antonio Johnson was tragically cut short. Inside an apartment near 22nd Street and Birch Drive in Kansas City, Kansas, both Antonio and his 14-year-old friend, Samuel Guess, were fatally shot. Police were dispatched to the residence around 10 p.m. on a shooting call and, upon arrival, discovered the two teenagers with gunshot wounds.
Both boys, who were students in the Kansas City, Kansas Public Schools district, were pronounced dead at the scene. The double homicide, which occurred across the street from Argentine Middle School, marked the city's seventh and eighth homicides of the year.
The violent deaths of the two young friends sent ripples of shock and grief through the community. Neighbors remembered Antonio as a quiet and nice young boy. In the wake of the tragedy, his mother, Veronica Johnson, shared the heart-wrenching detail that she had moved her family to Kansas from Arkansas to escape violence, only to lose her eldest child to a senseless act. The school district arranged for a crisis incident team to be available for students when they returned to classes, to help them cope with the loss of their classmates.
The Kansas City, Kansas Police Department's Major Case Unit immediately launched an investigation. For several months, no arrests were made, leaving a void of uncertainty for the families and the community. However, on May 3, 2022, a significant breakthrough was announced. The U.S. Marshals Kansas Fugitive Apprehension Task Force apprehended 24-year-old Patrick Howard, a resident of Kansas City, Missouri, in connection with the killings. The Wyandotte County District Attorney's Office subsequently charged Howard with two counts of second-degree murder.
Justice for Antonio and Samuel would come more than three years after their untimely deaths. In June of 2025, Patrick Howard, then 27, was found guilty of two counts of second-degree murder and one count of witness intimidation. For his role in the shooting deaths of the two teenagers, he was sentenced to 330 months, or 27 and a half years, in the Kansas Department of Corrections. The conviction brought a close to the legal chapter of a tragedy that deeply affected the Kansas City community and left two families to forever mourn the loss of their young sons.
