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A still image capturing the shooting death of Delia Johnson (NYPD).
Delia Berry, the mother of murder victim Delia Johnson, 42, used to consider the woman who killed her daughter as one of her own children.
“I did the best that I could for Claudia,” Berry lamented in court on Monday to Claudia Banton, 46, as reported by local news channel News 12 Brooklyn.
Prosecutors in Brooklyn, New York, claim that it was Banton who wore a blonde wig and black clothes while ambushing Johnson at a candlelight vigil after a funeral, which was in memory of a mutual friend, on August 4, 2021.
At the time, Johnson was talking to others in the crowd. The NYPD released a video showing Banton walking calmly up to the victim, shooting her point-blank in the head, and continuing to fire even as she lay dying on the sidewalk. The shooter then fled in a nearby double-parked car, but investigators later located her in Jacksonville, Florida, where U.S. Marshals apprehended her on November 8, 2021.
The defense tried to cast doubt that it was really Banton on the video, but jurors convicted her on April 3 of second-degree murder and second-degree criminal possession of a weapon. She is set to spend 23 years to life in prison.
“I feel like she deserved more,” Johnson’s sister, Cordelia McCray, reportedly said. “But today is about change, and today is about forgiving.”
“Her kids can still call her, still visit her,” Johnson’s brother, Mathis Lemons, reportedly said of Banton. “I’ll never see my sister again. I’ll never laugh with her again.”
Banton did not speak at Monday’s sentencing because the defense is planning an appeal.
“This shooting was a cold-blooded execution of a woman who was attending a ceremony to honor a late friend,” Brooklyn District Attorney Erick Gonzalez said. “It is especially shocking that the defendant was so brazen as to carry out this murder among a crowd of mourners, causing chaos and fear as they ran from the gunfire. My thoughts are with Delia Johnson’s friends and family who are heartbroken by this senseless loss of life.”
