Woman sentenced to 23 years for shooting friend to death at Brooklyn vigil
A woman was sentenced to 23 years-to-life in prison for the cold-blooded execution-style slaying of a longtime friend on a Brooklyn sidewalk where mourners had gathered to light candles and pay tribute to a mutual pal.
Claudia Banton, 46, had attended the same funeral as victim Delia Johnson a day before the 2021 killing and had even chatted with her at the service, officials said.
But when they crossed paths at the vigil the very next day, Banton singled 42-year-old Johnson out on a crowded Crown Heights sidewalk and pumped a bullet into her head, shooting her a couple more times after she fell.
'This shooting was a cold-blooded execution of a woman who was attending a ceremony to honor a late friend,' Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez said Monday.
'It is especially shocking that the defendant was so brazen as to carry out this murder among a crowd of mourners, causing chaos and fear as they ran from the gunfire'
The caught-on-camera murder was compounded by the confusion that ensued in the moments after the attack.
At least one witness told responding cops that a man had gunned the woman down. Police, armed with a description of the double-parked getaway car, even stopped Blanton mere blocks from the crime scene but let her go when she didn't match the misleading description.
Only when cops got a look a couple of hours later at the video of Blanton approaching Johnson from behind along Franklin Ave. and firing the fatal shot did cops realize their big mistake.
Detectives linked the license plate of the getaway car, a Mercedes-Benz, to a Claudia Williams in Georgia, one of the names and addresses Banton used. Cops tracked Banton down three months later in Jacksonville, Fla., and she was extradited to New York City.
Jurors watched chilling video of the shooting and of police officers frantically trying to revive Johnson as she gasped for breath and blood poured from her head. They also saw bodycam footage of police pulling over the shooter and letting her go.
The motive for the killing remains unclear.
'This is not a case where an argument escalated. This is not a case where the victim was shot by a stray bullet,' prosecutors wrote in a sentencing recommendation.
'Just the opposite, what the court saw during this trial is that this defendant took advantage of the unsuspecting people around her. Those who truly were there to mourn a friend. This defendant exploited the emotions of the night and was able to get within feet of her target, raise her gun to Delia's head and let off at least five shots.'
Banton was a longtime friend of Johnson's family and Johnson's mother treated her as another daughter, the victim's family said.
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