A Rhode Island man whose survival at birth was once recognized by Pope Leo as a miracle has been arrested in connection with a double shooting, more than a decade after he reportedly recovered without medical intervention despite being deprived of oxygen for over an hour.
Tyquan Johnson, 19, was taken into custody Wednesday morning at an apartment in Virginia by the U.S. Marshals fugitive task force, the Newport Police Department said, after authorities sought him for allegedly shooting two people.
Police said Johnson is accused of carrying out the shooting in Newport, Rhode Island, on July 19 before allegedly leaving the state for Virginia as officials obtained a warrant for his arrest.
Both people wounded in the shooting suffered injuries that were not considered life-threatening, according to police.
Investigators also said they are looking to question a second person in connection with the case, though that individual has not been publicly identified.
Johnson faces charges including felony assault with a firearm and firing in a compact area, police said.
The arrest comes nearly one year after Pope Leo XIV declared Johnson’s 2007 birth the first miracle of his papacy and the first officially recognized miracle in Rhode Island, according to the Boston Globe.
The unusual link surfaced after law enforcement released Johnson’s arrest warrant, which included a photo, name and date of birth matching the man Pope Leo recognized in July 2025.
Johnson was born prematurely on Jan. 14, 2007, at the former Memorial Hospital of Rhode Island in Pawtucket.
The newborn was suffering from oxygen deprivation and other symptoms that showed no improvement after 65 minutes, leaving doctors with little hope he would survive, according to the Diocese of Providence.
The attending physician, Juan Sanchez-Esteban, prayed to 19th-century Spanish priest Valera Parra for intervention in saving the child’s life, according to the Boston Globe.
Just as Sanchez-Esteban was about to deliver the devastating news to the child’s parents, a nurse stopped him and told him the child “suddenly recovered” and his heart had started beating without medical intervention, he told the outlet.
The doctor — who is from the same region of Spain where Parra was a priest — said the boy should have suffered permanent brain damage from the lack of oxygen, but instead lived a life completely free of any complications.
The investigation into the miracle began more than 10 years ago — with a bishop in Valera Parra’s native Spain sending investigators to Rhode Island in 2014, Father Timothy Reilly, Chancellor of the Diocese of Providence, told WJAR last year.
The Diocese of Providence announced that Pope Leo XIV declared Johnson’s recovery a miracle on July 18, 2025.
“The cool thing is, the more you think about the miracle itself, Father Valera lives in the 19th century,” Reilly said. “He never came to the US. We have no knowledge of him coming here. Never came to Rhode Island. And yet, because the doctor called out and called upon his name for help in the situation back in ’07 on behalf of that little baby, he decided to intervene and ask God for a miracle.”
Parra was a diocesan priest, archpriest and parish priest of Huércal-Overa who lived from 1816 to 1889.
