In December 2004, with the trial of one of the shooters completed and the new trial date of Jackson less than a month away, the task of finding the witness was assigned to the county Police Department's career criminal apprehension team.
Members of the unit, which is responsible for conducting surveillance in the county's highest-profile cases and tracking suspects who cannot be found, spent more than 100 hours looking for Johnson.
They followed his family members and associates, Trimble said. They generated lists of every phone call going in or out of his mother's apartment and then conducted surveillance on the people connected to those phone numbers. They staked out his mother's home -- repeatedly and often on holidays.
"It was a high priority for us because of the shooting at a high school," said Baltimore County police Sgt. Ricky Whitmire, who leads the career criminal apprehension team. "We used every investigative tool we had."
He said police searched 50 to 70 different homes for Johnson, sometimes coming back to the same residences several times, and tracked leads from Florida to Connecticut.
"One of our concerns was the fact that the offense itself, the high school shooting, has potential for more violence," Whitmire said. "With him testifying against someone else, someone could do him in. He had the bad guys and the good guys looking for him."
Relatives of and attorneys for Johnson have long maintained that he feared for his safety -- a claim that county prosecutors have sometimes disputed.
"I believe this young man is still very concerned about that whole aspect," said defense attorney Rodney J. Gray, who pointed out that his client had been held in protective custody at the detention center since his arrest "because we didn't want to expose him to that possibility."
Baltimore County Circuit Judge John G. Turnbull II sentenced Johnson to five years in prison but suspended all but one year of the term and directed him to serve it on home detention.
"This keeps him on house arrest until, hopefully, the other case goes to trial in July," he said of the attempted-murder case against Jackson.
Johnson was arrested in November. Charges were reinstated against Jackson in December.
jennifer.mcmenamin@baltsun. com
