Dani’s day: Murder trial begins with painful photos
Nearly three years after Katherine Danielle Howard, 22, was gunned down on a quiet residential street in Gordonsville, the trial of the teen accused of killing her starts in U.S. District Court Monday, December 8.
Facing four federal counts, including cocaine distribution and use of a firearm in drug trafficking that caused a death, Gary Christopher “G-Money” Johnson was 16 when Howard, known as “Dani” to her friends and family, died February 22, 2006.
Slight and wearing a yellow Oxford shirt, Johnson, who was indicted in June by a federal grand jury, did not turn around to face his potential jurors during the four-hour jury selection. An all-white panel of 10 women and four men will hear the week-long trial.
According to Assistant U.S. Attorney Craig Jacobsen, Johnson had come from New York to stay with his cousin, Curtis Waldron, Howard’s drug-dealing boyfriend, in their house at Shenandoah Crossing. Johnson often called Waldron his uncle and came to live with them on the condition he get his GED. When Dani complained to Waldron that Johnson was sitting around smoking pot and not going to school, the defendant had an altercation with Waldron. Later, said the prosecutor, Johnson told a witness, “I just (more)