‘In the dark.’ Family of man killed by police at Biloxi courthouse waits for answers
Reginald Johnson’s family and friends are waiting for answers about why he was killed by law enforcement outside the county courthouse in Biloxi on Friday.
As they wait, they gathered Monday at John Henry Beck Park to remember a brother, son and uncle who had “the biggest heart,” loved children though he had none of his own, and made friends across Biloxi, where he lived with his family starting when he was a young teenager in the 1980s.
“He was a peaceful person, a giving person, a loving person,” said Eric Johnson, his older brother. “We don’t know what happened.”
Johnson, 48, was shot and killed outside the Harrison County courthouse in Biloxi on Friday afternoon. Both a Biloxi police officer and a Harrison County deputy were involved, officials said. The Mississippi Bureau of Investigation is investigating, as it always does when police officers shoot someone on the job, but has released no details.
On Tuesday, Harrison County Coroner Brian Switzer said an autopsy had been conducted. Johnson’s sister, Deaundra West, said Switzer had given her little information about his findings, other than to say that a toxicology report would be available in four to six weeks. West said he would not tell her how many times Johnson had been shot.
Switzer told the Sun Herald he had to check with MBI before disclosing where Johnson was shot and how many times, because the case is under investigation.
West and Eric Johnson said no law enforcement agency has reached out to them. Days after their brother’s death, they still have no information about why he was killed.
“If he was wrong, he was wrong,” West said on Tuesday. “Why did you shoot him? Tell us why you shot him. You didn’t investigate to shoot him. You shot him right on the spot, so why is it taking so long?”
Johnson, 51, flew from his home in Denver to be with his mother and sister in Biloxi on Saturday morning.
“We’re just in the dark,” Johnson said. “If he ever had a confrontation with the law, he was always law-abiding, he always cooperated. We’re just in the dark right now on why this transpired or spiraled into the situation it did.”
A team player for a Biloxi championship
Reginald Johnson and his family moved from New Orleans to Biloxi in the 1980s. The siblings attended Biloxi High School, where Reginald was the manager of the basketball team when they won the state championship in 1989 and 1990.
Seber Windham, a member of that team and now the coach at Biloxi High, recalled that Johnson had been almost good enough to play varsity basketball. When he didn’t make the team, Coach Jackie Laird brought him on as manager.
“You have to do the dirty work: put up the uniforms, get the basketballs, get the water,” Windham said. “To do that really spoke of Reggie’s character, what type of young man he was.”
Windham said Johnson was proud of the state championship rings the team won: He wore his to school on a necklace.
West, 46, recalled that she and Reginald ran in different crowds at school, such that few people knew they were siblings. That changed when she ran for student body vice president.
“I had to say a speech in front of the whole student body,” she said. “I said the best speech ever, and everybody stood up, and he was like, ‘That’s my sister!’”
West said Reginald loved music and was a good dancer. They still laughed about the time when they were teenagers and he tried to teach her to dance.
“He said, ‘Show me what you can do,’” she said. “He wanted to know what he was working with.”
West danced, but her brother was unconvinced.
“He was like, ‘No, dance for real!’ I was like, ‘I am dancing for real.’”
Johnson said his brother was generous. He liked to fish and play basketball. He loved home cooking, and he was popular enough that he could always count on a hot meal at a friend’s house.
But Johnson and West also said that in recent years their brother had struggled with an addiction to spice, a synthetic cannabinoid that caused a wave of overdoses in Mississippi in 2015. Also known as K2, spice uses unregulated chemicals to mimic the effects of marijuana, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, but its effects can be more severe and include psychotic behavior and hallucinations.
Recently, West said, her brother had been doing well. He spent Christmas with his family at his mother’s house off of Pass Road in Biloxi and exchanged messages that day with Eric in Colorado. He had a job painting houses that kept him busy.
West said his employer picked him up to take him to work sites almost every day. But not this past Friday.
“He just happened to be off this particular day, God forbid,” West said.
A crowd at the courthouse after shooting
Paul Crenshaw was one of the friends with whom Reginald Johnson spent time hanging out at the barber shop across Division Street from John Henry Beck Park.
They’ve known each other since Crenshaw, 41, moved to Biloxi in 1994; they grew up playing basketball together. On Friday afternoon, Crenshaw said, Johnson was at the barber shop with friends. Then he left, saying he was walking to his uncle’s house.
Less than an hour later, shortly before 4 p.m., he was dead.
Johnson’s friends and family said they had no idea why he had gone to the courthouse that day. The building is about half a mile from John Henry Beck Park.
“We’re just trying to get the facts,” Crenshaw said.
Because no details of the shooting have been released, it is not clear if Reginald Johnson had a weapon at the courthouse on Friday. But his brother said he had never owned or carried a gun.
In the second-most recent shooting by police on the Coast, law enforcement was quick to claim that the person killed had a weapon. On the day Gulfport police shot and killed Henry Frankowski on Nov. 12, they issued a press release saying he “pointed a firearm at the officers.” MBI then issued a release on Nov. 16 saying Frankowski had been “brandishing a weapon,” though it did not specify what kind.
Records show Reginald Johnson did prison time for drug charges in 2004 and 2019, but never for any violent offenses, and West said he was released early because of good behavior.
Reginald Johnson’s siblings said he was always deferential to police — a lesson drilled into him by their mother.
“She always taught us to respect the law,” Eric Johnson said. “Just like every Black family in America, we all got that speech.”
West said that when she checked her phone during a work break around 4:30 on Friday, she had several missed calls.
“When I returned them they said, ‘You need to go check on your brother because I think something happened to him at the courthouse,’” she said. “I went down there, not thinking it was something serious.”
Some of Reginald Johnson’s friends and community members were already gathered there.
“They run up to me to tell me that it was my brother that had been killed,” West said.
At that point, West said, police couldn’t tell her anything, including whether the victim actually was her brother.
It took two or three hours for the coroner to arrive, West said.
“They had us standing behind the tape, and there was nothing I could do but just watch him being laid there, in the cold,” she said.
East Biloxi remembers RJ
At John Henry Beck Park on Monday, Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, friends of Reggie Johnson gathered to honor his life and be together. There was music and a grill, and many, many questions.
“We lost a good one,” said Garland Andrews, 49.
Dwayne Showers, 50, has been friends with Reginald Johnson since the 1980s.
“I want to find out exactly what happened,” Showers said.
Eric Johnson said his family was exhausted by the rumors that have swirled in the days since his brother died. He’s aiming to help his mother as much as he can, and to find out what happened to his brother.
For years, he said, he has followed the stories of Black people killed by police on the Coast, like Lee Demond Smith, Marcus Malone, and Jessie Lee Williams. And he’s followed the cases that have become rallying cries across the United States, like the killings of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd and Philando Castile.
“And then it happens to my family,” Johnson said. “I don’t know much, but I know he doesn’t carry a firearm, he’s never armed. Until I find out what happened or what the justification was for him shooting him, I’m hearing he was shot five times, six times, once in the head or twice in the head. I’m just like, wow. Really? Why?”
Sun Herald reporter Margaret Baker contributed to this story.
This story was originally published January 20, 2021 at 5:50 AM.
