A Utah woman, out on bail after allegedly shooting someone at random this summer, was charged Tuesday with shooting and killing a man while arguing with him outside a Salt Lake City home late last month.
Vanessa Nicole Johnson, 32, of Salt Lake City, was charged in 3rd District Court with murder, a first-degree felony. This time, a judge ruled she should be held without bail in the Salt Lake County jail.
According to the charges, Johnson was arguing with Jeremy Martin, 45, outside a home near Wenco and Riverside drives on Dec. 30, when she allegedly shot him.
Surveillance video from a neighbor shows Martin in the front yard yelling when a white car backed into the driveway and parked, police wrote in a probable cause statement. Martin and two other people argued with someone who got out of the car, and that person then shot Martin, police wrote. The video then shows Martin stumbling back off camera.
The shooter was later identified as Johnson, police said.
When police and paramedics arrived, Martin was dead. He suffered one gunshot wound to the chest, and police found a single .22 caliber shell casing nearby. Video from a nearby convenience store shows the make, model and license plate of the white car, which was registered to Johnson.
A witness told police she was in the passenger seat when Johnson got out of the car to get a phone charger out of the trunk, and then she heard arguing behind the car. As the witness started to get out, she heard a loud noise, saw blood on the ground and saw Johnson with a gun in her hand, according to charging documents.
The passenger said Johnson then “threw” the gun into the car’s center console and told the witness to drive because she’d been sprayed in the face with pepper spray and could not see. The charging documents do not indicate who sprayed Johnson.
The witness drove Johnson to a nearby convenience store, where she bought milk to wash out Johnson’s eyes.
At the time of the killing, Johnson was out on bail after she allegedly shot and wounded another man during an argument over a parking place in August, charging documents in that case state.
According to the charges, Johnson was fighting with two other women when she pulled a gun from under the seat of her car and “began to shoot randomly” in the direction from which she said she heard gunfire. The bullets hit a passerby in the shoulder. He told police he was walking, saw the fight, heard the gunshots and then was hit.
His wound was not life-threatening.
In September, Johnson was charged with discharge of a weapon with injury, a second-degree felony, and her bail was set at $2,500. She posted bond in September and was released, according to court records.
She is scheduled to appear in court for a hearing related to that shooting in February. Court records indicate an initial appearance hearing in connection with the alleged homicide will take place Thursday.
