Neighbors said Allen had recently moved before she was killed in a parking lot, setting off a search lasting more than two years.
NOTTINGHAM, Md. — Shakeia Allen had been living at her Baltimore County apartment complex for only a few days when, according to investigators, she encountered a former boyfriend in the parking lot, ran from him and was fatally shot in broad daylight. More than two years later, the man police accused of pursuing her there has been arrested and indicted.
The setting has become central to the case against Amir Johnson, 26. Allen, 27, had recently arrived at the ReNew Apartment Complex near Whitelaw Place, according to local reporting. Neighbor Dawn Beddis told CBS News Baltimore that residents later learned Allen had moved there to get away from Johnson. Authorities have not presented that statement as an official finding about Allen’s reason for moving, but it is part of the account neighbors gave after her death.
The confrontation unfolded on April 21, 2024. A nearby person began recording as Allen moved through the parking lot with a man investigators later identified as Johnson. Court documents described in local reporting say the recording shows him chasing Allen. Her words can be heard on the video as she demands that he stay away. Someone nearby also calls out, urging the man to leave her alone. Moments later, shots are heard and Allen falls.
Baltimore County officers arrived in the unit block of Whitelaw Place at about 3 p.m. and found Allen with multiple gunshot wounds. Emergency personnel pronounced her dead at the scene. Police initially described the shooting as targeted. They later publicly named Johnson as the wanted suspect and released his photograph while asking for information about his whereabouts. Allen was described by neighbors as the mother of a young child.
The video became one of the case’s most significant publicly known pieces of evidence. CBS News Baltimore reported that investigators said it showed Johnson shooting Allen several times at close range. The footage also records Allen saying she had a restraining order against him. That statement, made during the confrontation, sits alongside a more complicated court history documented before her death.
Records reviewed by CBS showed that Allen and Johnson had each filed protective-order proceedings involving the other in August 2023. Those cases were later dismissed after neither appeared in court. The public reports reviewed for this story do not clarify whether Allen’s reference to a restraining order in the April 2024 recording concerned one of those proceedings, a later action or some other form of court protection. That distinction has not been publicly resolved in the sources available.
The relationship had also drawn police and court attention in early 2024. Johnson was charged with assault in February after authorities said a dispute between the couple had stretched over several days before becoming physical. CBS reported that his court appearance in that case was scheduled for days after Allen’s killing. Johnson did not appear. The earlier assault allegation and the murder charge are separate cases, and an accusation in one does not establish guilt in the other.
What followed Allen’s death was not an immediate arrest but a prolonged search. Baltimore County police said Johnson may have had ties to Brooklyn, New York. Detectives renewed their appeal as the months passed, while the recording of the shooting circulated online and attracted attention far outside the apartment complex. Residents who had witnessed the aftermath were left with the knowledge that the person police accused remained at large.
By April 2026, the search had become a federal fugitive effort. The U.S. Marshals Service announced that Johnson was wanted on a first-degree murder charge and offered up to $5,000 for information leading to his arrest. The agency’s notice said police alleged that he shot his girlfriend outside her apartment building and fled in a vehicle. The announcement came almost exactly two years after Allen was killed.
The eventual arrest occurred hundreds of miles from Maryland. On Aug. 13, 2026, police in Auburn, Maine, arrested Johnson on charges of domestic violence assault and aggravated domestic violence assault connected to an April incident there, CBS reported. Officers checking his identity found the Maryland homicide warrant. The Maine charges were dropped Aug. 14 after Johnson was in custody and being returned to Maryland, according to the station.
That discovery ended a search that had lasted more than two years. It also changed the focus of Allen’s case. Instead of police and federal authorities asking the public where Johnson was, Baltimore County prosecutors could move ahead with a defendant in custody. A grand jury indicted Johnson on a first-degree murder charge, and Law&Crime reported from county court records that he also faces a firearm charge tied to the alleged killing.
The indictment does not establish that Johnson committed the crime. It permits the prosecution to proceed on the allegations returned by the grand jury. Johnson is presumed innocent unless found guilty, and the evidence that has received public attention — including the recording, witness accounts and prior court history — will be subject to the rules governing a criminal case if it is introduced in court.
Several details remain unanswered in public reporting. Authorities have not announced a proven motive. The available reports do not fully explain how Johnson allegedly located Allen at the apartment complex or what contact the two had immediately before the recorded confrontation. Nor do the reports reviewed here identify all forensic or digital evidence investigators may have gathered. Those gaps matter because the widely circulated recording captures only part of the sequence prosecutors say led to Allen’s death.
The long delay between the shooting and Johnson’s arrest also shaped how residents experienced the case. Beddis told CBS that people in the complex had remained watchful in case he came back. The concern was unusual in duration: the scene of the killing was also the home of people who knew for years that police had not yet arrested the suspect they publicly identified.
Allen’s recent move gives the case a particularly stark chronology. According to neighbors, she had barely begun living in the complex before the fatal encounter occurred there. That fact does not by itself establish why she moved or what Johnson knew about the move, but it became part of the story residents told as investigators searched for him and as the video spread online.
Currently, Johnson is being held without bond at the Baltimore County Detention Center following his return from Maine. No subsequent public report reviewed for this story established a trial result or changed the status of the murder charge. The next phase will occur in court, where prosecutors must prove the accusations and Johnson may contest the evidence against him.
Author note: Last updated October 17, 2026.