A still image capturing the shooting death of Delia Johnson (NYPD).
Delia Berry, the mother of murder victim Delia Johnson, 42, used to consider the woman who killed her daughter as one of her own children.
“I did the best that I could for Claudia,” Berry said mournfully in court on Monday to Claudia Banton, 46, according to local news channel News 12 Brooklyn.
Prosecutors in Brooklyn, New York, say it was Banton who sported a blonde wig and black clothing while ambushing Johnson at post-funeral candlelight vigil memorializing a mutual friend on Aug. 4, 2021.
Johnson had been speaking to other people among the crowd at the time. The NYPD released video in which Banton walked up nonchalantly to the victim and fired point blank into her head, and kept firing even after she lay dying on the sidewalk. The shooter than fled into a nearby double-parked car, but investigators tracked her down to Jacksonville, Florida, where U.S. Marshals arrested her on Nov. 8, 2021.
The defense tried to cast doubt that it was really Banton on the video, but jurors convicted her on April 3 of second-degree murder and second-degree criminal possession of a weapon. She is set to spend 23 years to life in prison.
“I feel like she deserved more,” Johnson’s sister, Cordelia McCray, reportedly said. “But today is about change, and today is about forgiving.”
“Her kids can still call her, still visit her,” Johnson’s brother, Mathis Lemons, reportedly said of Banton. “I’ll never see my sister again. I’ll never laugh with her again.”
Banton did not speak at Monday’s sentencing because the defense is planning an appeal.
“This shooting was a cold-blooded execution of a woman who was attending a ceremony to honor a late friend,” Brooklyn District Attorney Erick Gonzalez said. “It is especially shocking that the defendant was so brazen as to carry out this murder among a crowd of mourners, causing chaos and fear as they ran from the gunfire. My thoughts are with Delia Johnson’s friends and family who are heartbroken by this senseless loss of life.”
