The recording showed two encounters, a moment of separation and Taquiza Johnson’s armed return toward Ronald Barnett.
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — A Walmart surveillance system recorded the brief sequence that became the central evidence against former Kansas City police officer Taquiza Johnson: an argument in a crosswalk, two men walking away and Johnson returning with a concealed handgun.
Nearly two years after Ronald Barnett was fatally shot in the store’s parking lot, a Platte County jury convicted Johnson of second-degree murder and armed criminal action. Jurors recommended life in prison for the killing and 15 additional years for the weapons count. Johnson, 49, is scheduled to be sentenced Sept. 14 by Circuit Judge Myles Perry, who will decide whether to follow the jury’s proposed punishment.
The case turned less on conflicting eyewitness memories than on a camera’s uninterrupted view of movement through the lot. Prosecutors used the footage to establish where the two men stood, when the first exchange ended and what Johnson did during the pause before the shooting. The video did not record the men’s words, leaving jurors to weigh Johnson’s testimony about threats against the physical sequence visible on the screen. The recording showed Johnson leaving the Walmart on North Boardwalk Avenue on Aug. 21, 2024, while carrying a purchase. Barnett was driving through the area near a crosswalk. Johnson believed the vehicle passed dangerously close to him and extended an arm in its direction. Barnett reversed, stopped and stepped out. The men faced each other for roughly 20 seconds before returning to their respective vehicles, according to charging documents and accounts of the evidence.
That first separation became a key point in the prosecution’s case. Barnett drove to an accessible parking space near the entrance, parked and got out to continue toward the store. Johnson also reached his vehicle, but he did not depart the shopping center. Instead, the footage showed him driving toward Barnett’s SUV and stopping behind it, placing his car between Barnett’s vehicle and the active lane of the parking lot.
Johnson then got out carrying a handgun behind his back, prosecutors said. He walked toward Barnett, who was in the driving lane near the store entrance. After a second verbal encounter, Johnson fired one round into Barnett’s abdomen. Barnett collapsed. Johnson returned to his car and left. The complete episode lasted less than two minutes, a compressed timeline that prosecutors used to show both the suddenness of the killing and the deliberate movements between the two confrontations.
The images alone could not establish what either man said. Johnson supplied that part of his account when he took the witness stand during the five-day trial. He testified that Barnett had threatened to kill him and had used racial slurs. Johnson said those words caused him to fear an attack when the men met again. No independent recording with audio was cited as confirming the alleged threats or language.
Cross-examination shifted attention back to what the video and Johnson’s own observations showed. Johnson admitted Barnett was unarmed. He also said he never saw Barnett display a gun, knife or other object that could cause deadly harm. Prosecutors argued that whatever was said during the first dispute, Johnson had reached safety at his vehicle, armed himself or positioned his firearm and then drove back toward Barnett.
Perry ruled that the evidence did not support giving the jury a self-defense instruction. Platte County Prosecuting Attorney Eric Zahnd said verbal threats and insults, without evidence of an immediately available deadly weapon or comparable force, do not justify a deadly response under the Missouri standard applied in the case. The ruling did not prevent Johnson from describing his claimed fear, but it limited the legal choices jurors were directed to consider during deliberations.
The verdict showed that jurors found the evidence sufficient for second-degree murder. That offense did not require them to find every element associated with a first-degree, deliberated killing. It required findings covered by Missouri’s second-degree murder law, including knowingly causing a death or intending serious physical injury that results in death. The separate armed criminal action verdict reflected Johnson’s use of the handgun while committing the felony. Johnson’s departure was also documented through the investigation that followed. Kansas City police were called to the Walmart shortly after 4:15 p.m. Officers found Barnett, 71, wounded in the lot, and paramedics transported him to North Kansas City Hospital. He died from the gunshot injury. Within about 10 minutes of the shooting, Missouri State Highway Patrol troopers located Johnson’s vehicle at a nearby apartment complex and took him into custody.
Authorities alleged Johnson had changed clothes by the time he was found. That detail was presented alongside the surveillance chronology, his departure from the scene and the recovery of information connecting him to the shooting. The publicly available accounts do not provide a complete exhibit list or a transcript of every witness’s testimony, so the precise weight jurors assigned to the clothing evidence is not known. Their verdict came after five days of testimony and argument.
Johnson’s law enforcement background gave prosecutors another fact that distinguished the case from an ordinary parking-lot dispute. He had served with the Kansas City Police Department for about 10 years, ending in February 2014. He held no police authority in August 2024. The prosecutor’s office said the firearm used against Barnett had been Johnson’s former duty weapon, though the shooting itself occurred more than a decade after his police employment ended.
Zahnd described the killing as a broad-daylight act committed in a store driving lane after an argument. His office stressed that Johnson’s earlier police service did not give him a different legal right to use deadly force as a private citizen. At trial, the important question was not whether Johnson had once been trained to carry a firearm, but whether the evidence justified his use of it against Barnett at that moment. Perry concluded the record did not support the requested self-defense instruction.
The video also shaped how Barnett’s final minutes were understood. He arrived intending to enter the store, stopped during an unexpected exchange and then attempted to resume his errand. After parking, he was walking back toward the entrance when Johnson drove behind his vehicle. Nothing in the published evidence indicates that Barnett and Johnson knew each other before their vehicles and paths crossed in the Walmart lot.
Barnett’s relatives have described the killing as difficult to comprehend because of how quickly it arose from a routine trip. His obituary said he left four children, 11 grandchildren, 16 great-grandchildren and five siblings. Family members welcomed the life recommendation while continuing to grieve a death that the surveillance footage reduced to a sequence of ordinary movements interrupted by a single gunshot.
The recording that helped settle questions of movement cannot impose a sentence. That decision belongs to Perry at the September hearing. Missouri law requires the armed criminal action sentence to run consecutively to the punishment for second-degree murder. Until the judge enters judgment, the life term and additional 15 years remain jury recommendations rather than the final sentencing order.
Author note: Last updated July 28, 2026.