Red light cameras caught a murder on video and helped catch the killer, according to court records.
Jackson County prosecutors on Friday announced a murder charge against a Kansas City drug dealer for shooting a woman to death on 71 Highway.
Calah D. Johnson, 32, is charged with second-degree murder in the 2009 killing of Deanna L. Lieber, an attorney for the Kansas Department of Education.
Lieber, who was driving, and her daughter and mother-in-law were going home after a Starlight Theater show. At 71 Highway at 59th street, a bullet shattered a window in their Dodge Durango.
The victim drove off the road, dead from a bullet in the neck.
According to court records:
Police got video of the incident from traffic cameras at the intersection, along with license plate numbers of a Pontiac and a Mercury Mountaineer that appeared to be chasing the Pontiac.
The woman owner of the Pontiac told police that a man with “light colored eyes” confronted her and her boyfriend at a convenience store.
The angry man was boyfriend of her boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend, whose apartment had been broken into. The man blamed her boyfriend for it and seemed to be armed.
He followed them and shots came from the Mountaineer, she said. She identified Johnson as the man who confronted them.
The woman owner of the Mountaineer told police that Johnson, her boyfriend, had used the car that evening.
“She said he even apologized because he had gotten a red light ticket at the intersection of 59th Street and 71 Highway because he had ran the light.”
Johnson is serving a 20-year federal prison sentence for cocaine trafficking. Court records in that case say his nickname was “Green Eyes.”
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