Teryn Johnson of Philadelphia was 17 when she was fatally shot in 2022, allegedly at the behest of her boyfriend. She was also nine weeks pregnant. Now, a judge has ordered that a case against Johnson’s alleged killers can proceed on two counts of murder — for the deaths of both Johnson and her preborn child.
When Johnson’s boyfriend, 20-year-old Halim Evans, learned of her pregnancy, the first thing he mentioned was abortion.
“We gotta get the abortion jawn,” he texted her in July 2022. “I ain’t ready for no more kids.”
But as Johnson’s grandmother recalled, Johnson was no pushover when it came to standing up for what she wanted — or didn’t want — to do. “I know my baby,” she told the Philadelphia Inquirer. “When she says she’s not doing something, that’s it. She’s not doing it.”
According to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, an estimated 20% of women will experience violence during their pregnancy, and homicide is a leading cause of death among pregnant women — often young mothers who are murdered for refusing to abort their babies. Violence is even higher among pregnant adolescents, and women with unintended pregnancy are more than twice as likely to experience violence.
Prosecutors in the case have alleged when Evans found out that Johnson would not get an abortion, he turned to his cousins, Qasim Pointer and Jamel King, to kill her.
READ: Abortion doesn’t prevent heartache. It only adds to the tragedy.
In a recorded prison call, Pointer laid out the situation to his brother, in prison serving a 70-year sentence for an unrelated crime. He told his brother that Evans allegedly offered to pay for the murder. “Bro, our cuz … he been dropping babies like […] flies bro,” Pointer said on Sept. 7. “He dropping babies like flies but one of them he trying to trim up so I … I mean, I don’t condone this … but like, for that paper I would do it bro. […] Bro, he like, ‘I got the paper for you,’” the Inquirer reports.
On the night of September 11th 2022, Evans Face-Timed his girlfriend as she walked her dog to find out her location, which he then texted to his cousins, Pointer and King, who were waiting nearby in a stolen vehicle.
Video evidence shows the car following her for a short while before Pointer jumps out of the passenger’s side and fires two shots at Johnson’s back. He then flees the scene, leaving her where she fell. Johnson was rushed to Temple University Hospital, where she later died of her injuries.
A SWAT Team, U.S. Marshals and local law enforcement arrested Evans and King – at that time, fugitives from the law – at a hotel in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, in March of 2023. Pointer was apprehended in Newark, Delaware, by U.S. Marshals in August of the same year. All were taken into custody without incident.
A judge in the case this week ruled the case against Pointer, King, and Evans can proceed on charges of murder, first-degree murder of an unborn child, and various gun crimes.
But in the meantime, Johnson’s loved ones are left to mourn her loss and hope for justice.
