John Crawford Jr. would regularly make the 400-mile drive from his home in Jackson, Tennessee, to Fairfield, Ohio, to see his son, John Crawford III. Sometimes they would plan a week in advance to meet up. Sometimes Crawford would call his son along the way. On Aug. 5, he decided to surprise him. He got in his car and made the trek to the home of Tressa Sherrod, John’s mother.
When Crawford arrived in Fairfield he saw LeeCee Johnson, the mother of John Crawford III’s two children, outside on her cell phone. She looked perplexed, Crawford thought. He just waved and walked into Sherrod’s house.
“Where’s Trey?” Crawford asked her about their son John, using his nickname.
“Where’s Trey?” Crawford asked her about their son John, using his nickname.
Sherrod said John had gone out with a friend. Crawford figured he’d be back soon, so he sat down on the couch and started playing with his two grandsons, nearly 2-year-old John Henry IV and 5-month-old Jayden.
Then Crawford heard Johnson scream to him from outside, “Oh. Mr. John, Mr. John! They shot him! They shot him!”
Crawford ran out to the front yard when he heard the cry. Johnson had been on the phone with John the whole time. She heard the shots ring out, and said John screamed: “Dad! Dad!”
Once Crawford got outside, Johnson put the phone on speaker.
“I heard him scream,” Crawford told BuzzFeed News. “Some more voices were saying stuff like, ‘Try to hold your arms up, sir. We need you to try to stay with us.’”
Crawford stood there stunned, listening to the tragedy play out over the phone and unable to help his dying son. Johnson was jumping up and down. John, on the other end of the phone, was gasping, trying to breathe, sucking for air.
And then, suddenly, there was silence.
“That was it,” Crawford said.
That was the day 22-year-old John Crawford III was fatally shot by police inside a Walmart in Beavercreek, Ohio, near Dayton.
Surveillance video shows John Crawford III walking around the store with a pellet gun that he picked up inside the store.
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