BATON ROUGE — It was like reliving the loss all over again for Kerisha Johnson’s family. One of her killers was sentenced to 30 years in prison and her father told the court that his family will never recover from losing her and her unborn daughter.
“This is just pulling off the scab again,” Kevin Johnson said Friday before Torey Campbell was sentenced.
Campbell, 21, pleaded guilty to manslaughter and first-degree feticide on Tuesday, during jury selection for what would have been his trial on second-degree murder and first-degree feticide.
Campbell was one of five men arrested in the April 2023 killing of 36-year-old Kerisha Johnson and her unborn daughter My’Kenzia Noel Gekira Johnson.
MORE: Pregnant woman killed as she went to pick up her daughter from a party
My’Kenzia had been expected to be born in less than a week.
Johnson was picking up one of her older daughters at an Easter party on North Carrollton Avenue around 12:30 a.m. on April 16, 2023. Investigators said her car looked similar to one that fired a shot in the air earlier that night. That resemblance turned out to be fatal. When she pulled up to the site of the party, multiple gunmen fired at the car.
Johnson’s family, including her father and her two surviving daughters, told he court about the unfathomable loss of the mother and child.
Shalonda Guy, who said she was Johnson’s god sister, took a deep, ragged breath before she spoke. Prosecutor Tiara Jones rested a hand on Guy’s back.
Guy told State District Judge Louise Hines that she knew Johnson looked up to her and that pushed her to be a better person.
“I’ve never been the same since that day,” she said. “I’m a shell.”
Guy said she was disappointed Campbell wouldn’t be in jail for the rest of his life. Johnson is gone forever, and that pain will follow Guy for the rest of hers.
“I know he’s not going to be in jail for a lifetime,” she said.
Tanisha Johnson, the victim’s sister, called the killers “stupid, careless, wanna-be gangsters.”
“I hope karma catches up to each and every one of them,” she said. “Their actions shattered my family.”
Johnson said her nieces, her siblings and she still feel the “pain that doesn’t fade. It just becomes part of who we are.”
Kyannia Johnson, Kerisha’s oldest daughter, said the loss of a parent is too much for a teenager to handle.
“I’ve been so lost and broken having to deal with this,” she said.
Kevin Johnson recalled being at church and being suddenly overwhelmed looking at the place Kerisha would have been sitting.
“It was just too much to miss her,” she said.
Hines offered Campbell a chance to make a statement, but he declined. She sentenced him to 20 years in prison on the manslaughter charge and another 10 on the first-degree feticide charge and ordered that the sentences be served consecutively.
Other defendants
Campbell’s sentencing left Derrick Dewayne Curry as the only suspect in the killing still awaiting trial. He pleaded guilty on May 11, 2026 to illegal use of a weapon and was sentenced to a year in jail.
Gregory Parker Jr. pleaded guilty to illegal carrying of a weapon in October 2024. He was sentenced to six months in Parish Prison with credit for time served. Court minutes show that the plea allowed him to leave jail immediately.
Marques Porch, who was working a corrections deputy for West Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff’s Office at the time of the crime, pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice on the same day as Parker’s guilty plea. Porch was given two years’ probation.
Desmond Robinson pleaded guilty in May to being an accessory after the fact to second-degree murder. He was sentenced to five years in prison.
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