NEW ORLEANS (AP) — The man arrested Friday in the fatal shooting of a 21-year-old who confessed to killing a high school student last year is apparently the slain teen’s father.
Bokio B. Johnson, 46, was arrested in connection with the shooting that killed Hollis Carter and wounded a woman Wednesday, New Orleans police said.
An obituary published in 2021 named Johnson as the father of Caleb Johnson, who was 18 when he was killed. Police did not immediately respond to an email asking whether the man arrested Friday was indeed Johnson’s father.
Defense attorney John Fuller has said Carter was killed and his mother critically wounded on the way to a pretrial hearing in the deaths of Caleb Johnson and his 25-year-old stepsister, Breyiana Brown on March 28, 2021. Police did not identify Carter, whose name was released later Friday by the Orleans Parish Coroner’s Office.
Online information from the Orleans Parish Sheriff’s Office showed that Bokio Johnson was booked Friday on charges of second-degree murder, which carries an automatic life sentence, and attempted second-degree murder — the same charges that Carter had faced.
Fuller told The Times-Picayune/The New Orleans Advocate that he had planned to argue in court that Carter’s confession was false and was made because he was afraid of the actual killer.
He did not respond to an email Thursday from The Associated Press asking whether Carter had told him that person’s name and, if so, whether Fuller had given it to investigators.
The district attorney’s office declined to comment about the planned defense, saying the case is still open, the newspaper reported.
Carter, free on $375,000 bond, had been due in court for a status hearing on two counts of second-degree murder and one count of attempted second-degree murder.
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