Prosecutor demands 28 and 21 years in prison for ‘cold-blooded execution’ of Saban fireman (2)

The two men accused of killing Saban firefighter Sheldon Johnson should be sent to prison for terms of 28 and 21 years, a prosecutor told the Court of First Instance on Thursday, who de­scribed the night-time shooting as a “cold-blooded execution”.

The prosecution’s hefty demand came near the end of Thursday’s day-long trial against A.N.W. (26) and R.v.H. (37), who faced charg­es of murder, attempted manslaughter and possession of two kilogrammes of cocaine. Both men denied any involvement in these crimes, repeatedly telling the court they are innocent.

Johnson (32) was fatally shot out­side his Hell’s Gate home around 8:45pm on September 12, 2025, after returning him from a drive with his girlfriend who was visit­ing from another island. She told police that she was walking ahead of him to the apartment when she heard a loud crack.

The girlfriend said she turned around and saw a gunman in a black hoodie walk over to John­son. The perpetrator fired two more times at close-range while Johnson was laying wounded on the ground, she told police, after which he shot once in her direc­tion and ran away.

An autopsy report read during Thursday’s trial revealed that Johnson was shot twice from behind, with both bul­lets perforating major or­gans. An ambulance rushed to the scene but Johnson was dead before he reached the hospital.

Johnson and the two sus­pects had fought on oppos­ing sides of a public brawl in The Bottom in May 2025, and on the night of the shooting, Johnson’s relatives told police at the scene that they believed W. and H. had committed the murder. The suspects lived a couple hundred metres away and were arrested at home at 10:22pm. They have been in custody since. W. claimed that he had been home all night and did not even know about the shooting until police came knocking on his door. H. told the court that he was exercising by a bus stop on the nearby main road when he heard the shots and shortly afterwards saw a person dressed in black fleeing towards Windward-side. W’s girlfriend, who also lived with them, told police that both men had been home at the time of the shooting.

Forensics

The prosecutor rejected those accounts and de­manded a prison sentence of 28 years for alleged gun­man W., and a sentence of 21 years for H., who was ac­cused of standing look-out and disposing of the mur­der weapon afterwards.

The officers who arrested W. and H. that night had noticed that their surveil­lance cameras appeared to have been hastily discon­nected, the prosecutor told the court, adding that the memory card that W. hand­ed to police did not contain any footage.

Investigators conducted six searches of the suspects’ home and the surrounding bushes in the weeks follow­ing the murder. From the bushes, they recovered a memory card wrapped in a towel, milk cans containing a total of two kilogrammes of cocaine, and a bag con­taining a black hoodie and t-shirt, dirty black sweat-pants and disposable black latex gloves. From the home, authorities recov­ered three walkie-talkies and a box of black latex gloves, the court heard.

Subsequent forensic test­ing uncovered W’s DNA on the hoodie’s inside collar and on the plastic wrap­ping of the cocaine pack­ages. Gunshot residue – the fine particles of gunpowder discharged from a gun’s muzzle after it is fired ­was found on W’s and H.’s hands, as well as on the hoodie, sweatpants and la­tex gloves found in the bag. When asked by the judge, W confirmed that the hoodie was his but said he did not know how it could have ended up in a bag hid­den in the bush. He denied owning the sweatpants and gloves.

As for the gunshot residue, W told the court he never handled a weapon before and thus had no idea how this material could be found on him. H. speculated that wind must have blown the gunshot residue on his hands while he was hiking and the hunters from the government’s goat-culling programme were active on the trials.

Police did find four empty shells at the scene but these did not have sufficient DNA for comparison, the prosecutor said. However, the markings on the shells were enough for the Dutch Forensic Institute NFI to conclude that the murder weapon was likely a 9mm Glock pistol, the court heard.

Footage

The memory card wrapped in the towel contained the missing surveillance foot­age from the night of the shooting.

According to the judge, the footage showed W sitting under a tent in their yard at 7:08pm. He stays there looking in the direction of the street until 7:29pm and goes inside.

H. comes onto the porch at 7:38pm and faces the street. A vehicle drives past at 7:49pm and he stands up as if “trying to observe the car,” the judge said. She lifted a still image taken from the video at 8:00pm and H. confirmed to the court that he is the person sitting on the porch.

W. emerges from the house at 8:13pm and returns to the tent. The judge showed a still image taken from the video at this time and W confirmed that he is the person by the tent.

W. joins H. on the balcony at 8:23pm and Johnson’s vehicle could be seen pass­ing their house and leaving the area at 8:26pm. When this happens, W. immedi­ately stands up, moves to­ward a vehicle parked in the driveway, grabs some­thing from the back and walks out of view.

A hooded man dressed in black emerges in the cam­era’s view near the tent at 8:37pm. At the time, H. is still seated on the balcony. The hooded man jumps onto the balcony roof at 8:39pm and looks in the direction of Windward-side until 8:42pm, when he makes a gesture and runs back toward the tent.

Johnson’s vehicle passes again at 8:43pm, heading toward his apartment, and the hooded man follows the car on foot. At the same time, H. leaves the balcony, grabs something from their parked car and walks to­ward the road.

The footage captures gun­shots at 8:45pm, and 12 seconds later the hooded man is seen running down the road, in the direction of Windwardside. He passes H. and disappears from view, while H. runs and disappears behind the bus stop.

At 8:53pm, the cameras capture W. in his yard, dressed in the same clothes as he had before. H. re­turns from the bus stop and heads inside their house at 8:55pm, having been out of view behind the bus stop’s wooden bench for almost nine minutes.

The first police car is seen rushing to the crime scene at 8:56pm. The cameras stop recording at 8:57pm. When asked about this, W speculated that his young son, who he said often plays with the cameras wiring, must have inadvertently unplugged the surveillance system at the time. He de­nied being the hooded man. As for H., he claimed that he had seen a “shadow” lurking around the cars and went to check but saw nothing. He said he did not see anything and decided to grab his workout equip­ment from inside the car and went to the bus stop to get some exercise. Accord­ing to H., this is when the shooter ran towards him and he ran behind the bus stop out of fear.

One direction

The prosecutor did not be­lieve the defendants’ sto­ries, instead arguing that the evidence pointed to men carrying out a well-organised “assassination” and erasing “as much evidence as possible”.

According to the prosecu­tor, the hooded man that followed Johnson’s car had the same build and pos­ture as W. and wore similar clothing to the gunshot res­idue-laden articles found in the bag recovered from the bushes. W’s DNA linked to the hoodie found in the bag and he had gunshot resi­due on his hands, showing that he had recently shot a firearm, the prosecutor ar­gued.

H. acted as W’s accomplice by assisting in surveillance and getting rid of the gun behind the bus stop, the prosecutor argued. W. must have tossed the weapon to H. when he ran past, the prosecutor said, argu­ing that this was the only scenario that explains how gunshot residue could have ended up on H.’s hands when he was not at the crime scene.

Johnson’s killing was clear­ly premeditated, the pros­ecutor argued, pointing to the ChatGPT messages re­covered from the suspects’ phones between June and August 2025.

The prosecutor read from several in the case, includ­ing when W. asked the AI chatbot about whether people living near a murder scene could be compelled to hand over their surveil­lance footage, or question­ing the value and strength of alibis against other types of evidence. Many times, the prosecutor said, the suspect specifically asked the programme about how these things work in Saba. “These are all the more striking because the sus­pect’s girlfriend later pro­vided an alibi and the video footage was initially not found,” the prosecutor said.

It emerged during the trial that police secretly record­ed W. and H. during their transportation to jail in Bonaire, a practice allowed under Dutch law. In one in­stance, they suddenly start­ed whispering and W. asked if they “found the gun”.

In another instance, they started discussing what they told police in their in­terrogations. According to the prosecutor, W. advised H. to say that he had been inside all night and got “ag­gravated” when H. said he had already told police that he was outside when he heard the gunshots.

“Only thing we have to do is stick to the same thing and we gone. You check?” the prosecutor quoted W. as saying.

W. and H. likely had not anticipated Johnson’s girl­friend being present that night, the prosecutor ar­gued, noting that she was “not from Saba and only arrived that day.” He the­orised that her presence startled W, prompting a “split-second decision” to fire at her in an attempt to “eliminate a witness.” According to the prosecu­tor, damage to a wall be­hind where the girlfriend had been standing sup­ported the conclusion that W. had deliberately aimed in her direction. However, he asked the court to ac­quit H. of the attempted manslaughter charge, ar­guing that the girlfriend was “not part of the plan” and that there was “no evidence he would have acted in the same way.”

The prosecutor also re­quested H.’s acquittal on the cocaine posses­sion charge, noting that only W’s DNA was found on the drug packages. In explaining the sentenc­ing demands, the prosecu­tor asked the court to im­pose 28 years in prison on W. and 21 years on H.

He argued that the higher sentence for W. was justi­fied because he considered him responsible for all charges before the court, whereas H. should only be convicted for being an ac­complice to Johnson’s mur­der. The prosecutor also pointed to W’s prior con­viction for gun possession in St. Maarten, for which he received an 18-month prison sentence in 2021. “There was no unknown man in the shadows,” the prosecutor said. “What we do have is an abundance of evidence that only points in one direction.”

The judge will render a ver­dict on June 25.

The Daily Herald