How a mother, thrust into a West Philly gang war, defended her son at all costs

When Emily Johnson’s only child, K.J., was shot and killed, she felt as if her life was over. Then, in a twist of fate, she had a second chance at motherhood.

There was something in the air that warm summer day when Emily Johnson’s life changed forever.

It was just before noon on July 21, 2021, and Johnson’s 16-year-old son, K.J., had finished up a day of summer school at Boys’ Latin Charter. As he walked toward his car with his best friend, Tommie Frazier, two other boys asked him for a ride home.

K.J. Johnson said no at first — he didn’t want to be late to basketball practice. But the boys pleaded, and he gave in.

Meanwhile, two young men were lurking in the shadows across the street, watching their every move. Known as “Most Wanted” and “F5ive,” the two were members of a West Philadelphia gang and were on the hunt for a 16-year-old from a rival crew.

They watched from a blue minivan as their target got into Johnson’s car. As he pulled away, they trailed closely behind for more than a mile, following their every turn, braking with their every stop.

As Johnson rolled his blue Hyundai to a stop at 56th and Vine Streets, warm air wafted through the open windows, and then in a flash, 10 bullets followed and ripped through the driver’s side of the car. The first shot killed him instantly, doctors would later say. It tore through the side of his mouth and shattered most of his teeth.

More bullets flew into the car, striking Frazier, 18, in the chest and killing him. The teen next to him was shot in the shoulder, and survived.

The fourth boy — the shooter’s intended target — sprinted out of the car at the sound of gunfire, narrowly avoiding the bullets. As soon as he turned the corner to safety, he pulled out his phone and called Johnson’s mother, she said.

“Somebody shot K.J.’s car,” he screamed.

She asked him where he was, but he said he didn’t know. He was just running.

Emily Johnson, within 15 minutes, would arrive on the scene. She was desperate for information, desperate to find her son.

But he was not there.

Her only child, the center of her world, was at Penn Presbyterian Hospital, his body lying on a gurney, covered by a white sheet.

Within a few months, police arrested the two men responsible: 18-year-old Arshad Curry, or “Most Wanted,” and 20-year-old Raheis Sherman, often known as his rap name “F5ive.” The two pleaded guilty to the crimes in recent months in a case that illustrates many of the central themes of Philadelphia’s gun violence crisis: teen victims and shooters; a gang feud fueled by trivial disagreements and rap songs; and grieving families forced to defend their loved ones’ legacies from online trolls.

Assistant District Attorney Cydney Pope, who prosecuted the case, said solving the murder and securing a guilty plea required months of dogged detective work, gathering evidence, scouring social media, and persuading terrified witnesses to testify.

But it’s a case, she said, that brings her little sense of justice.

“These are kids killing kids,” she said. “And for what?”

But this is not a story of the investigation. This is a story of how Emily Johnson, on the day she lost her only child, would be thrust into the middle of an escalating gang war, fighting to defend her son’s legacy at all costs.

And it’s a story of how, in a fortuitous twist of fate, Johnson, 40, would later be blessed with something she never thought possible: a second chance at motherhood.

An unbreakable bond

The deaths of K.J. Johnson and Tommie Frazier splintered their West Philadelphia community and made waves across the city, leaving the hundreds of people who knew and loved them heartbroken and in shock.

Their killings also came amid an immense spike in gun violence in Philadelphia, in a year where more people were shot and killed than in any other in the city’s history. And although the level of violence has dipped slightly in 2023, the carnage of recent years is difficult to comprehend: More than 6,500 people have been shot, and more than 1,900 have been killed in homicides, since just 2020.

And most of the victims, like Johnson and Frazier, are young Black men.

The boys had grown up together in West Philadelphia, and became friends after meeting in music class in the third grade.

Frazier, a senior at Simon Gratz High School, was shy at first, but once he got to know and trust someone, he was goofy and loving, friends said. He was protective of his family.

And K.J., going into his junior year at Boys’ Latin, had friends all across the city. He was funny, empathetic, and athletic. He inherited his natural athleticism from his mother, his best friend, and the two were inseparable.

Because it was, for many years, them against the world.

Emily Johnson grew up in the foster system, and she regularly got into fights and was suspended from school, she said. After getting kicked out of the house at 17, she said, she started selling marijuana to support herself.

“I was on a fast road to destruction,” she said.

Then, when she was 19, her then-boyfriend assaulted her, she said. At the hospital, doctors told her that she had a concussion and dislocated shoulder — and that she was pregnant.

She was devastated, she said, and didn’t want to have a baby at that point in her life, especially with that man. She immediately made an appointment for an abortion, she said, but learned, to her surprise, that she was 5½ months along. It was too late.

Through the rest of her pregnancy, she said, she referred to the fetus as “it.” She felt no emotional connection to the child growing inside her.

But as soon as the doctors placed her son, Kaylin Jahad, in her arms, she said, everything changed. Her world shifted. She had never loved anyone or anything more.

“I had a reason,” she said.

A reason to turn her life around, to imagine a future for herself and her son. She stopped selling marijuana. She opened a bank account and found an apartment. She became certified to do electrical work and other trades.

She was determined to give K.J. everything she never had — a mother who was always there, at every basketball game, birthday party, and school event. Her life would revolve around him.

It paid off. He grew into a loving, respectful boy, and even in his teen years, his relationship with his mother never wavered.

“It was just me and him,” she said. “He saved my life. He was my reason for everything.”

And then someone took him.

July 21, 2021

Emily Johnson remembers the day with such clarity.

She remembers arriving at the scene and seeing her son’s car in the middle of the street. She remembers the Philadelphia Police officer who came to her side as she sat on the curb, then lifted her up and said, “Come on, let’s go see your baby.”

She remembers being at the hospital, and climbing on the gurney that held her son’s body, then lying there for more than an hour, holding him, touching the bandage on his face, telling him she was sorry.

“I should have driven you to school, I should have picked you up,” she cried into his ear.

Once Johnson left the hospital, she went back to the scene of the shooting. She was in shock, but also in detective mode, she said, determined to understand exactly what happened, and speak to as many witnesses as possible.

Detectives had already recovered video from the scene showing that the shooters drove a blue minivan with a license plate registered to Sherman’s mother. And video from outside Sherman’s house on Pennsgrove Street — where police later recovered the van — shows that three men got into the car about a half-hour before the shooting, then returned six minutes after.

But that alone wasn’t enough to make an arrest, and the motive behind the shooting was not yet clear.

Rumors began to swirl about why Johnson and Frazier were killed. Some on social media suggested they were in a gang, while others went as far as to say they’d shot someone and this was revenge.

But Emily Johnson knew her son. She had always tracked his whereabouts, monitored his social media, and was familiar with all of his friends. He was not a gang member; he knew not to make enemies.

Confirmation that the boys were not the intended targets came quickly — in a most unusual way.

Days after the killing, the gang the shooters belonged to — the Young Bag Chasers, or YBC — reached out to apologize, and offered her and Frazier’s mom $10,000 as a peace offering.

“They knew they messed up,” said Pope, the prosecutor.

The mothers declined the money.

That, they would later learn, was perceived as a sign of disrespect, and only made things worse.

The “Young Bag Chasers”

Philadelphia’s street groups and gangs are mostly loosely organized groups of young men who affiliate with certain neighborhoods. The groups have names — usually based on their blocks — but no hierarchy or formal induction. In recent years, they’ve grown more centered around drill rap music, a sub-genre of hip-hop known for lyrics depicting violence.

There are dozens of groups across the city: 02da4 in Southwest, the Klappers in South Philly, Zoo Gang in North.

And then there’s YBC. Originally based in the Mantua section of West Philly, YBC quickly became known for shootings as well as writing merciless songs in which they mocked victims and their families.

And so when Johnson’s and Frazier’s mothers declined their “peace offering,” YBC made it known that, yes, they killed those boys — and that they had no regrets.

One member — a young man who goes by “YBC Dul” or “Mr. Disrespectful,” whom Pope called the ring leader, or “puppet master,” of the group — frequently called the teens out by name and mocked the cruel circumstances of their deaths.

“Ask them youngins that got stuck up in that car,” he and others rapped in one song. “They yellin’ ‘breathe baby breathe,’ ‘cause his lil’ lungs got torn apart.”

In other songs, Dul said the shooting of the boys was “a two for one.” He sneered that “K3 can’t make no more jump shots,” referencing his basketball talents.

Emily Johnson seethed as she watched them slander her son and his friend. Killing her only child was not enough — they had to remind her every day that he was gone.

People created fake Instagram accounts — some even pretending to be K.J. — and sent Johnson threats. One person sent her a photo of herself, standing outside of a store in West Philadelphia.

“We know where you work at sweetheart,” someone wrote her. “Ya done.”

Every time the groups mentioned K.J. and Frazier in a song, they gathered more views, more clout, more money, and fueled a misconception that the boys were involved in something to warrant being shot.

But Johnson was not afraid. She dished it right back. She called the members out on her own Instagram and shared publicly the hateful messages they’d sent her. Using the same colorful language “Mr. Disrespectful” used to address her, she made clear she wasn’t hiding and would always defend her son.

The feud grew by the day. Dul even went as far as to rap that he’d like to “slap K.J.’s mom.”

“I know I was probably supposed to be scared,” Johnson said in a recent interview. “But at this point, I had nothing to live for. I didn’t care.”

Finally, in December 2021, she got some relief: Curry was arrested and charged with murder in the deaths of K.J. and Frazier, along with multiple counts of attempted murder and gun crimes. And not only did he kill them, he also fatally shot 19-year-old Sidney Sessoms in the doorway of his home, then shot Sessoms’ father — crimes to which he has also pleaded guilty.

Five months later, Sherman was also charged with murder and related crimes.

But this brought Johnson little comfort. The reality was that her life was diminished, disfigured by loss. She struggled to get out of bed. She spent days and nights at the cemetery, sleeping next to her son’s grave. She smoked marijuana just to will herself to eat.

She was a childless mother.

Then, in May 2022, everything changed.

A gift from Kaylin

She remembers feeling exhausted and nauseated that month, but she brushed it off as another symptom of grief. Then, at her niece’s graduation, a relative pointed out that her legs were swollen.

“Are you sure you’re not pregnant?” her cousin asked her.

Her heart dropped.

These were some of the same signs she had while pregnant with K.J. She drove right to the emergency room, and a doctor confirmed it. She was three months pregnant — with a baby boy.

“I just broke down,” she said.

How, in the face of unimaginable tragedy, was she being handed this gift?

“Kaylin sent me this baby,” she said. He sent him to save her, just as he did all those years ago.

“I got exactly what I needed when I needed it,” she said.

But this child, she said, was not and never will be a replacement.

Ryder Koi Johnson-Dispensa was born Jan. 4, 2023, named after his older brother’s favorite hobby of riding dirt bikes.

“There are times I feel really guilty, like how am I supposed to be his mom? Sometimes I feel like I’m not supposed to be happy, like I’m not supposed to be a mom.”

But if there’s any proof she is, it’s this.

A killer’s apology

On a recent day in October, Johnson walked into Philadelphia’s Criminal Justice Center with a pit in her stomach. This was the day she’d been waiting for: the day her son’s killers would take ownership of their crimes and plead guilty.

She said she felt numb as Curry repeated the word “guilty” over and over. Then, she said, he turned around to face her.

He locked his green eyes with hers, and as tears streamed down his face, he apologized for what he did, then said what she’d been fighting for all these years: Her son and his friend were innocent.

“I’m sorry,” she said he told her. “I’m sorry for taking your innocent child. … I know you hate me, I deserve for you to hate me.”

But she realized, she said, that she didn’t hate him. She didn’t forgive him, she said, but she couldn’t hate him. He, too, was a kid, barely older than the ones he killed.

And finally, she said, he had told the truth — something no rap song or social media taunt could take away from her.

As she walked out of the courtroom, Curry’s and Sherman’s families also apologized. Curry’s younger brother cried in her arms and wept for what his brother had done.

Then she drove home, she said, and cried herself to sleep.

Now, some days are harder than others, especially as she prepares to speak at Curry’s and Sherman’s sentencing hearings on Dec. 19.

She thinks of K.J. constantly, and his friends still come to her house often to play games and hang out. And Ryder looks more like his brother every day, she said — and seems to know it.

On a recent day, she lay beside him, kissing his chubby cheeks, pinching his little thighs, running her fingers through his curls. She splayed a white plush blanket on the ground with a photo of K.J. printed in the center.

As soon as she did, Ryder crawled away from her and onto the blanket. He moved toward the middle, then stopped above his brother’s face, and stared.

“He knows him,” Johnson said.

Her eyes welled with tears. She looked down, then back at her son, and smiled.

Here, in the depths of despair, she would learn the full measure of what motherhood can be in Philadelphia, how it encompasses love and loss. Hatred and forgiveness. Guilt, remorse, emptiness — and an overwhelming, newfound joy.

A grasp at the past. A hope for the future.