Taquiza Johnson admitted Ronald Barnett was unarmed before jurors convicted him and recommended the life sentence a judge later imposed.
PLATTE CITY, Mo. — Taquiza Johnson told jurors that a 71-year-old man had threatened him during an argument outside Walmart, but the former Kansas City police officer also acknowledged a decisive fact on the witness stand: Ronald Barnett was unarmed when Johnson shot him.
That admission became part of the evidence that left Johnson without a self-defense instruction and ended with his conviction for second-degree murder and armed criminal action. Circuit Judge Myles Perry sentenced Johnson, 49, on Sept. 14 to life in prison for murder and 15 additional years for the firearm offense, with the second term running consecutively. The judge adopted the punishment recommended by jurors after a five-day June trial. The case turned not only on Johnson’s claim that he had been threatened, but on what prosecutors said he did after the first confrontation was already over.
Johnson testified that Barnett threatened his life and used racial slurs during an initial argument on Aug. 21, 2024, in the parking lot of a Walmart on North Boardwalk Avenue in Kansas City. Prosecutors did not ask jurors to ignore that account simply because the words themselves were disputed. Instead, they focused on whether the evidence showed circumstances that legally justified deadly force. Johnson conceded on cross-examination that Barnett did not have a weapon and that he had not seen one in Barnett’s hand. Perry declined to give the jury the self-defense instruction Johnson sought.
Platte County Prosecuting Attorney Eric Zahnd said after the case that Missouri’s rules on deadly force require more than verbal threats or insults. His office argued that fear of being grabbed or punched did not, on the trial evidence, justify shooting Barnett. The judge’s ruling was especially important because a self-defense instruction would have given jurors a legal framework for acquitting Johnson if they found the use of deadly force justified. Without it, jurors evaluated the killing under the charged offenses and the evidence presented about Johnson’s actions before the gunshot.
The physical sequence began when Johnson was walking away from Walmart through a crosswalk. Prosecutors said he believed Barnett had driven too close to him. The men exchanged words, and Barnett got out of his vehicle. The confrontation remained verbal and then ended. Barnett drove away from that immediate spot, while Johnson went to his own vehicle. There was no evidence presented by prosecutors that Barnett displayed a firearm or another deadly weapon during that encounter. That separation became critical because Johnson was no longer standing in the same confrontation when the next phase began.
Surveillance video showed Barnett parking his SUV in an accessible space. Roughly a minute later, Johnson drove into the lane behind Barnett’s vehicle and stopped. Prosecutors said Johnson got out while holding a gun concealed behind his back. Another short verbal exchange followed. Johnson then shot Barnett once in the abdomen, according to the prosecutor’s office. Barnett fell, and Johnson got back into his vehicle and drove away rather than remaining in the parking lot. Paramedics took Barnett to North Kansas City Hospital, where he died a short time later.
The video evidence gave prosecutors a way to challenge the idea that Johnson was trapped in a single, continuously escalating confrontation. It showed a break between the first exchange and the shooting, including movement by both men back toward their vehicles. It then showed Johnson driving to Barnett’s new parking location. Prosecutors used that sequence to argue that the fatal encounter was not simply an instantaneous reaction to a threat. Jurors also heard Johnson’s own testimony, allowing them to compare his account of fear with his acknowledgment that he had not seen Barnett armed.
Johnson’s prior law-enforcement career made the trial unusual but did not change the standard the court applied. He served as a Kansas City police officer for about a decade before leaving the department in 2014. He had no police authority at the Walmart in 2024. Prosecutors said he used what had once been his duty weapon in the shooting. Zahnd highlighted that history after the conviction, describing the killing as especially striking because Johnson had previously served as a sworn officer. The jury nevertheless had to decide the case on the evidence and Missouri criminal law, not on Johnson’s former occupation alone.
The prosecution itself had taken a complicated path. Johnson was first charged with second-degree murder and armed criminal action immediately after the shooting. He pleaded not guilty. Prosecutors later upgraded the homicide count to first-degree murder in February 2025. When the case finally went to trial in June 2026, the jury did not convict Johnson of first-degree murder. Instead, it found him guilty of second-degree murder along with armed criminal action. That distinction preserved a serious murder conviction while rejecting the most severe homicide count prosecutors had pursued before trial.
Jurors then recommended life imprisonment for the murder and 15 years for armed criminal action. The recommendation was not merely symbolic. When Johnson returned for sentencing in September, Perry imposed those terms. The prosecutor’s office said Barnett’s daughter and granddaughter gave victim-impact statements asking the court to follow the jury’s recommendation. Their statements came after a legal process that had stretched from the August 2024 shooting through changes in the charges, pretrial proceedings, Johnson’s testimony, the jury verdict and finally sentencing.
The defense claim also sat against evidence of Johnson’s conduct after the shot. He drove from the Walmart, and authorities located him at a nearby apartment complex soon afterward. Court records cited in reporting said he appeared to have changed clothes. Investigators recovered a firearm and assembled surveillance footage, witness information and other evidence. None of those facts alone resolved Johnson’s assertion that he had feared Barnett, but together they formed part of the broader record jurors heard while determining whether Johnson was criminally responsible for Barnett’s death.
Barnett’s relatives described him outside court records as a father and grandfather whose life had centered on family and familiar routines. His obituary said he had four children, 11 grandchildren and 16 great-grandchildren and enjoyed bowling, trains and Halloween. His daughter, Elizabeth Moon, told a local television station after the killing that Barnett had survived kidney cancer and recently had received positive medical news. She later filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against Johnson, a civil action separate from the criminal prosecution.
The sentencing now fixes the criminal consequences of the jury’s decision. Johnson faces life imprisonment for second-degree murder followed by the 15-year armed criminal action term. The outcome rests on a record in which Johnson was permitted to tell jurors why he said he was afraid, yet his own testimony established that Barnett had no visible weapon. Coupled with the surveillance sequence showing the men separate before Johnson returned, that evidence left the court unwilling to submit self-defense to the jury and ultimately left Johnson convicted of murder.
Author note: Last updated November 6, 2026.