Carlos Collins was a 25-year-old registered nurse in Jackson, Mississippi, described by family as a light in this dark world and a gentle giant who loved to help others. After ending a year-long relationship in late 2023, his family says he was relentlessly stalked and that he reported harassment to the Jackson Police Department multiple times and obtained a restraining order. They believe the department, where the suspect had once been an officer, failed to protect him.

The terror culminated in the early hours of April 9, 2024, at Collins’s apartment in the Tapestry Northridge complex. Prosecutors say the suspect, Marcus Johnson, brutally attacked Collins, striking him six times with an axe and shooting him at least 15 times. Ring camera footage reportedly shows a naked, bloody Collins banging on a neighbor’s door for help before he was killed; a neighbor who heard the commotion called 911 and later found Collins’s body on the doorstep.

Johnson, a 35-year-old former Jackson police officer, fled but was captured the next day after a multi-jurisdictional chase near Monroe, Louisiana, and extradited to Jackson on murder and related charges. The jury later convicted Johnson and he was sentenced to life plus a consecutive 10 years for shooting into an occupied dwelling. If anyone knew Carlos, his movements, or his concerns in the months before April 9, did you see or hear anything that could help explain what happened?