A Tennessee man with a serious criminal history is behind bars again after online court records show he is accused in a new case tied to an alleged domestic violence incident.
Davidson County Sheriff’s Office records reviewed Wednesday list Johnthony Walker, 34, as being held in a Nashville jail on seven new charges connected to the alleged incident.
Walker has faced major criminal scrutiny before. He was previously convicted of negligent homicide in connection with a school bus crash that killed six children and injured dozens of others nearly a decade ago.
Johnthony Walker, who was convicted in a wreck that killed six children, was indicted on statutory rape charges.
According to court documents, Walker was employed as a school bus driver for a Chattanooga-area school district in 2016 when authorities said he was speeding while carrying elementary school students.
A file photo of the crashed school bus on the scene of the accident in 2016. (AP Photo/Mark Humphrey, File)
Investigators also said Walker was driving along an unauthorized route when he veered off course, struck a mailbox and a telephone pole, and caused the bus to overturn before it crashed into a tree.
Walker was found guilty in 2018 and received a four-year prison sentence, according to court records.
Two years after the deadly bus crash conviction, in 2020, the Davidson County District Attorney says Walker pleaded guilty to rape.
Walker was sentenced to six years and one month in prison, to run consecutively to his four-year sentence in the deadly school bus crash case, and was ordered to register as a sex offender.
Johnthony Walker was sentenced to four years in prison. (Doug Strickland/Chattanooga Times Free Press via AP)
Unrelated to the bus crash and rape conviction, Walker was booked into jail on Monday on charges including aggravated assault by strangulation, aggravated burglary, child abuse, interference with an emergency call, and three charges relating to sex-offender violations.
