By Michaelangelo Conte/The Jersey Journal
Closing arguments in the trial of Ahmmad Johnson, 27, who is charged with carjacking a car to use to shoot his girlfriend's father in a drive-by shooting and then killing the man he carjacked for linking him to the drive by, were heard yesterday.
Johnson allegedly shot his girlfriend's father in Newark on March 5, 2005, because the father convinced his daughter to abort Johnson's child.
The carjack victim, Piotr Raczek, a resident of the Jersey City Heights, was murdered Aug. 31, 2005 on Thorne Street.
"It's no coincidence that after a Hudson County grand jury indicted (Johnson) for the carjacking, he killed Piotr Raczek," Hudson County Assistant Prosecutor Michael D'Andrea said during closing arguments yesterday.
"He knew Piotr Raczek would not only connect him to the carjacking, but to the shooting," D'Andrea said.
Early in 2005, Johnson got his then 19-year-old girlfriend pregnant, but her family didn't think much of Johnson and convinced her to have an abortion, which angered Johnson, prosecutors said.
On March 3, 2005, Johnson carjacked Raczek's blue Subaru sports car at gunpoint, and two days later, he used the vehicle in a drive-by shooting of the girlfriend's father, according to prosecutors.
The father survived the shooting and gave police a description of the car. On March 8, his wife and daughter were followed by a Blue Subaru in Newark and they got the plate number, prosecutors said.
Newark police determined the car was stolen from Raczek, and Raczek identified Johnson as the carjacker, prosecutors said.
Defense attorney John Dell'Italia argued that Raczek didn't see the carjacker well enough to identify him.
Dell'Italia also said the girlfriend's father was with a man carrying a sizable amount of drugs at the time he was shot in Newark and suggested the father may have had enemies.
The jury is scheduled to begin deliberations Tuesday morning in the courtroom of Hudson County Superior Court Judge Paul D. Pascale.
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