[chris]

Courts left a 60-year state prison sentence in place for Rasul McNeil-Thomas in the May 26, 2011, Newark restaurant drive-by that killed off-duty police Officer William Johnson.

Johnson, 45, a 16-year veteran assigned to the Newark Police Department's Communications Division, was unarmed and in plain clothes, waiting to buy a slice of pizza at the Texas Fried Chicken and Pizza restaurant at 250 Lyons Avenue when he was hit at about 9:45 p.m., the Essex County Prosecutor's Office said. He was taken to University Hospital and pronounced dead at 3:10 a.m. Two other customers were wounded, a 19-year-old woman shot in the shoulder who had a toddler with her, and a 21-year-old man shot in the stomach. Both survived. The toddler was not hurt.

Investigators said Johnson was not the intended target. The car used in the shooting, a silver Chevrolet Malibu, had been taken at gunpoint from a driveway about a block and a half away minutes earlier, and was found abandoned four blocks from the restaurant, according to the trial record later summarized by the state Supreme Court. A police dog tracked a scent from the driver's seat through Saint Peter's Park; a surveillance camera at the restaurant recorded a muzzle flash from the Malibu's front passenger window. The prosecutor's office posted a $20,000 reward while the case was still open. Johnson, the father of two daughters, was buried after a funeral at New Hope Baptist Church.

An Essex County grand jury indicted McNeil-Thomas of Newark, who was 19 at the time of the shooting, on charges of murder, conspiracy to commit murder, carjacking and conspiracy to commit carjacking, attempted murder, aggravated assault, two weapons counts and child endangerment. Prosecutors said the gunfire grew out of an earlier confrontation between members of McNeil-Thomas's family and a group of women, and that he was aiming at people in the restaurant when he shot Johnson.

A jury convicted McNeil-Thomas on Feb. 24, 2015, of aggravated manslaughter, two counts of attempted murder, carjacking and conspiracy to commit carjacking, two counts of aggravated assault and two unlawful handgun possession counts. Superior Court Judge Robert Gardner sentenced him on April 24, 2015, to an aggregate 60 years in state prison, with 85 percent to be served before parole eligibility under the No Early Release Act. "The sentence imposed by Judge Gardner is appropriate for someone who opened fire on a crowded restaurant, killing one person and wounding two others," the prosecutor's office said at the time.

The case moved through the appellate courts for another eight years. An appeals panel threw out the convictions in December 2017 over a video clip the prosecutor played during summation, but the New Jersey Supreme Court reinstated them on June 18, 2019, in a divided ruling with three justices dissenting. McNeil-Thomas then sought post-conviction relief, arguing his trial lawyer had been ineffective. A trial judge denied the petition after an evidentiary hearing, and the Appellate Division affirmed that denial on Nov. 15, 2023, leaving the 60-year sentence in place.

The recording is police radio traffic from that night, running about twenty-eight and a half minutes. It is a logging tape rather than a single call, so it captures the dispatch of units to Lyons Avenue, the traffic as officers reached the restaurant and the hospital, and the early search for the vehicle, with unrelated citywide traffic running alongside it.