Imagine you’re getting out of your car in your own driveway when someone pulls a gun and then pulls the trigger. That’s what happened to a Miami-Dade Corrections officer in December 2012, and as Patrick Fraser tells us on tonight’s Out for Justice, detectives are still trying to find his killer more than a year later.
WSVN — Most people never want to see the inside of a jail. Andrew Johnson couldn’t wait to get there every day.
Ebony Johnson: “He loved corrections. It was always his passion to be an officer.”
For 10 years, Andrew was a corrections officer at Metro West, not just guarding the inmates, but firmly believing he could guide them.
Ebony Johnson: “Once they got out of jail, ‘Thanks for talking to me, thanks for encouraging me.’ He’d say, ‘I’m proud of you, keep up the good work.’ Everybody loved Andrew.”
A religious man, a deacon at his church, a devoted father and husband. And then on December 1st he pulled up in his Miami Gardens driveway.
Miami-Dade Police Lt. James Tietz: “On arriving home he had some type of a confrontation with one or more subjects.”
Andrew had come home to get ready for his daughter’s 13th birthday. He was confronted when he got out of his car.
Lt. James Tietz: “Witnesses report hearing two gunshots and then discovered Mr. Johnson laying in his driveway, having been shot.”
Ebony got home a few minutes later.
Ebony Johnson: “I started running to the house, they stopped me, and all I could see was them working on my husband down there.”
Andrew was dead. The gunman, or gunmen, gone.
Lt. James Tietz: “We didn’t find any witnesses, or none came forward that reported an actual subject or subjects fleeing from the area.”
The fact that no one saw anything stuns Ebony.
Ebony Johnson: “I know somebody saw something. Even if it was a car coming and leaving my house, they saw something. If they’re scared to talk, I don’t know, but they saw something.”
Nobody talked, nobody saw anything. A good man dead, the gunman or gunmen gone, and a year later, still nothing for detectives to go on. Maybe it was a robbery, maybe an angry driver who followed Andrew Johnson, and since Andrew’s neighbors say they didn’t see anything, the key to catching the killer may be back among the inmates that the corrections officer, Andrew Johnson, tried to help.
Lt. James Tietz: “This incident probably got some talk in the corrections facilities, and I would like to ask anybody who may have been incarcerated at that time or maybe incarcerated now and heard something while they were in jail. I would ask them to come forward and just let us know what they heard.”
Odds are the gunman bragged to someone, maybe to someone they trusted from jail. Ebony and her children need that someone to help find the killer of a man who tried to help so many people who were once behind bars.
Ebony Johnson: “Do it for our kids, especially my baby girl. She needs to know who took her dad on her birthday.”
And if you make that call, to name the killer of Andrew Johnson, know you will be getting a check for $15,000 dollars. Just pick up the phone and dial Miami-Dade Crime Stoppers at 305-471-TIPS.
And if you have lost a loved one and want to remind people you are still out for justice, give us a call. With this Out for Justice, I’m Patrick Fraser, 7News.
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