MIAMI — Fifteen years ago, Jermaine Johnson’s father was shot to death at a pay phone in Overtown. Years later, his stepfather was also shot to death outside a home in Miami Gardens — as Johnson, then just 12, watched in horror.
Johnson himself has now met a similar violent fate. This past weekend, rifle-wielding gunmen ambushed a Miami birthday party, peppering a rented home with bullets, killing the 19-year-old as he was inside a bedroom. The shooting, which also injured Johnson’s cousin, was yet another blow to a family that has long been devastated by gun violence.
“It’s so sad,” said his mother, Ashley Walden. “My baby went through so much.”
The shooting happened early Saturday, during the height of the storm that walloped South Florida with rain, at a modern new town home on the 3200 block of Southwest 23rd Street in Miami’s Coral Way district. Family believe the house had been rented as an “Air BnB,” and it has been listed on short-term rental websites such as Airbnb and Vrbo. What site rented the home was unclear — both Airbnb and Vrbo said Monday no bookings were made through their platforms.
Just after 2 a.m., at least two gunmen apparently scaled a back fence and unloaded their weapons on the house, the bullets penetrating windows. So far, Miami police detectives have not made any arrests nor released any descriptions of the gunmen.
Law enforcement sources say the shooting may be related to a series of gang feuds that have erupted in public in recent months. Walden said she did not believe Johnson was the intended target, and suggested that a brother may have been a target. She also believes the shooting was unrelated to another shooting earlier that day — someone shot at Johnson’s family home in Miami Gardens, a dispute she thinks was over money.
“It’s two separate shootings,” Walden said.
Tragic history
For Walden, her son was but the latest loved one to mourn.
Johnson’s father was gunned down on July 16, 2007. His name was Gerald Johnson, nickname “Junky Jit,” and he’d been raised in Overtown by the mother of his best friend. That mother, Eleanor Wilson, struggled to keep her biological son and Gerald Johnson from the streets, often finding them in crack dens in Overtown.
‘’I tried to save them, but that wasn’t in my power,’‘ she later told the Miami Herald in a story profiling her struggles.
Her biological son died in a car accident. Gerald Johnson died when a friend, after an argument, shot him to death outside an Overtown convenience store. The gunman, Ricky Ryland, was convicted at trial in Miami and is now serving a life prison sentence.
Hoping to improve her family’s life, Walden moved her children to Miami Gardens.
But in 2015, James Hall, the father of one of her daughters, was shot to death by attackers as he walked up to their home. He had just picked up Jermaine Johnson, then 12, and his older brother, then 14, from their grandmother’s house. The boys were still in his car when the gunfire erupted.
No arrests were ever made in the case.
Walden said the shooting traumatized Johnson, who became introverted and never wanted to leave the house. “He didn’t want to talk about it. I tried to get him counseling for it,” Walden said. “He lost interest in sports. He’d been very active and used to play a lot of basketball and baseball.”
Johnson attended Norland High and eventually got his GED, his mother said. He’d loved art and she’d hoped to help him start a business printing custom-designed shirts, or working as a barber.
“Jermaine was a humble child. He barely even spoke. He wasn’t a problematic child,” Walden said. “He was my helper at home — he’d stay around the house, to watch my youngest baby, so that I could go to work.”
———
