As Kieara Martinez climbed the stairs in Theater 6 at the Regal Cinema in West Manchester Township the night of Dec. 2, 2019, her friend and date for the movie, Andre White Jr., was behind her.
She heard him greet a young man sitting in the aisle seat a couple of rows before their destination at the rear of the theater, later identified as Anu-Malik Johnson. They both said, “Whassup?” She said she didn’t see the exchange but described the greeting as aggressive.
She did not say whether she knew of bad blood between the two young men. Johnson believed White was among the shooters who had targeted him outside a bodega on West Princess Street two years before. Gunfire meant for Johnson went awry, striking a woman who just happened to be leaving the store, killing her. Another person, a teenager at the time, was arrested in the killing and later convicted.
Anu-Malik Johnson was a star running back at Northeastern High School, rushing for more than 1,000 yards his senior year. Now, he is standing trial for first-degree murder in the December 2019 shooting death of Andre White Jr. at the Regal Cinema in West Manchester Township.
A few minutes after the then-18-year-old Martinez and White settled into their seats, she saw Johnson stand up and walk toward them, stopping in front of her or slightly to her right.
She heard gunfire and ducked, she said.
When she lifted her head from between her knees, White was lying on the floor and Johnson was gone. White died later from multiple gunshot wounds at York Hospital. He was 22.
On Tuesday, Martinez, now 23, described that last night of White’s life on the witness stand during the first day of testimony in 25-year-old Johnson’s trial on charges of first-degree murder and related offenses.
Shooting victim testifies
Another witness, Luisa Torres, who was wounded during the shooting, described the scene that unfolded before a late-night screening of “Queen & Slim,” a film about a young couple that becomes embroiled in a violent crime.
She and her boyfriend were the first people to enter the theater – they thought the movie had begun as they were running late, she said later – taking seats in the back row. It was too far from the screen, Torres said, and they moved up one row. The theater was still lit.
A few other people entered the theater, including two men who sat in the row in front of them. The men, she said, were “acting very suspicious.” They were “nervous,” she said, looking at their phones.
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Another couple entered the theater, and as they walked up the stairs to the back row, they paused by the two men seated on front of her. She didn’t hear any words being exchanged and thought little of it, until later.
One of the men left the theater and returned a few minutes later. Then he and the other man moved back a row, taking seats on the aisle, a seat away from Torres.
A short time later, the man who had left the theater momentarily got up and headed for the exit just as the lights were dimming, she said. The man with him got out of his seat and walked to the back row, behind her.
“And he starts shooting,” Torres testified in courtroom 7006. “I just heard gunshots.”
She gripped the arms of her seat and shut her eyes, she said. “I thought I was going to die,” she said.
When she opened her eyes, she said, she saw the man running down the stairs toward the exit. She heard someone in the back row sorting through some things. Her boyfriend turned to the woman and asked her to call 911. She refused.
Her boyfriend looked at Torres and said, “You got shot. You got shot.”
He took his shirt off and pressed it to her right cheek, which had been torn open and “was bleeding a lot,” Torres recalled. He pressed her right shoulder, which was also bleeding. That was when Torres felt the pain, she said, her shoulder later requiring surgery and her right cheek still bearing the scar from the stitches to close the wound.
She didn’t see a gun, she testified.
Her boyfriend called 911 after tending to her wounds, she said. The woman who had been with the man who was shot left the theater before police arrived, she said.
Before she fled, she told Torres, “I’m sorry that happened to you. I didn’t mean for this to happen.”
Martinez’s testimony conflicted slightly with Torres’. She said she never apologized to Torres. She said she called 911, albeit giving the dispatcher a false name because she had an outstanding warrant for retail theft.
She said after the shooting, she started to leave the theater but went back to the last row when she saw Torres, her boyfriend tending her wounds while screaming, and White lying on his back on the floor. As she tended to her mortally wounded date, she said, White’s phone, resting in his seat’s cupholder, rang. She answered it and told whoever was calling that White had been shot. The person who called – she didn’t know who it was – arrived a short time later with another person. Apparently, she said, they had been at the movie theater.
A few moments later, a police officer arrived. She dropped White’s phone into her purse and left without speaking to the officer. She said she fled because “I was on the run. I had warrants. If I stayed, they would have taken me into custody.”
She testified that she didn’t know why she took his phone. “I was in shock,” she said.
Later, she said, she went to the hospital where police spoke to her. She told them all of White’s belongings should be with his body. She didn’t mention taking his phone.
Police told her they’d be in touch. She dodged their calls for four days. On Dec. 6, U.S. Marshals took her into custody and delivered her to West Manchester Township Police.
Police repeatedly asked her what she did with White’s gun. The defense asserts that White was also armed and Johnson acted out of self-defense. Martinez said she did not see a gun in White’s possession that night. When police asked her about it, she responded, “I didn’t take no gun.”
About half an hour or 45 minutes into the hour-long interview she mentioned taking White’s phone.
She was charged with hindering apprehension, obstructing the administration of law and tampering with evidence. Those charges were plea-bargained down to a misdemeanor tampering with evidence and she was sentenced to probation. The original felony charges could have resulted in her being sentenced to 18 years in prison, the defense pointed out.
That sparked lengthy questioning about her criminal record. She was on probation and was facing jail time when she was charged in this case. As a condition of her bail, defense attorney Jonathan White said, she was to refrain from picking up new criminal charges. But after her arrest in this case, he reviewed six different cases in which she avoided being remanded to jail, the last being a disorderly conduct charge in October 2023, which would have led to a probation violation, but she was not violated.
Trial spectators clash
After her direct testimony and before defense cross examination, an altercation among spectators and witnesses broke out in the hallway outside the courtroom. Sheriff’s deputies were summoned to separate the parties and restore calm.
When the trial resumed – and before the jury re-entered the courtroom – President Judge Maria Musti Cook told those assembled that they “forgot where you are” and said that any further altercations would result in participants being barred from the courthouse. “Make no bones about that,” the judge said, “you will be left out in the cold.”
Columnist/reporter Mike Argento has been a York Daily Record staffer since 1982. Reach him at mike@ydr.com.
This article originally appeared on York Daily Record: Woman testifies movie date ended with gunfire in the Regal Cinema