Man who executed NBA player Mo Bamba’s brother with shotgun in Fort Worth guilty of murder
When Ibrahim Johnson moved into an east Fort Worth apartment complex where Stanley Ford was living, Ford helped to lift and carry his furniture, and the men were friendly for a time.
“I’m the gentleman who welcomed him to the neighborhood,” Ford said in an interview with Fort Worth police homicide Detective Jerry Cedillo.
The benevolence faded over months, and Ford and Johnson quarreled about damaged property. Each banged on the other’s door. Ford at one point attempted to ease the acrimony by offering Johnson a cup of Crown Royal. Johnson declined the drink.
By October 2020, the relationship between Johnson and Ford, who each lived with a girlfriend in units in adjacent buildings in the complex near East Loop 820 and John T. White Road, had thoroughly fractured.
When on a Sunday in late morning Ford received a report by telephone that Johnson may have been on the back porch area of the apartment where Ford lived, he had had enough, according to the account he gave Cedillo.
Ford’s girlfriend called 911 to report the porch matter. She said Johnson had left and had no weapons. Ford was at a store when he said he learned of his neighbor’s latest transgression and returned to the complex.
As he waited for police, Ford’s restraint faded.
Holding a shotgun, Ford approached Johnson and Johnson’s girlfriend, Asia Cobb, near a stairwell where they had been stopped by a friend of Ford.
Twenty-eight minutes had passed since the porch report. An officer had not arrived.
Ford fired once upon Johnson, who did not have a weapon.
As Johnson turned and ran, Ford stalked him as if he was wounded prey and shot Johnson dead, Tarrant County Assistant Criminal District Attorney Lucas Allan told a jury last week in a closing argument at Ford’s trial on murder, unlawful possession of a firearm by a felon and tampering with evidence.
The jury of eight women and four men in 396th District Court in Tarrant County on Thursday found Ford guilty of each of the offenses. It sentenced him to 80 years in prison on the murder count, 12 years on the firearm count and five years on the tampering count. The jury was asked to select from a term of 15 to 99 years or life in prison on the murder count and two to 20 years on the other counts.
The state in January offered Ford a 40-year prison term in exchange for a guilty plea to murder. It asked the jury for a life sentence.
Senior District Judge Bob Brotherton presided over the trial as a visiting judge. Before it reached the guilty verdicts, the jury deliberated for about 50 minutes. The panel deliberated for about two hours on the sentence.
Johnson, who was 26, tripped as he ran and fell to a dirt-and-grass area near the complex office. Ford stood over Johnson and fired into his body, Cobb and another eyewitness, neighbor Larry Bonner, testified.
Ford, 32, did not testify during the trial’s guilt-innocence or punishment phases.
Cobb met Johnson at a pool party in the summer of 2018 in San Marcos when she was a student at Texas State University. They moved to Fort Worth and eventually settled at the Metro 7000 Apartments in the 1000 block of Sycamore Drive.
On Oct. 18, 2020, the day Johnson was slain, the couple drove in the morning to a dog park, then returned to the complex.
After they arrived and were walking to a stairwell, Johnson and Cobb were met by Uriah Barras, a neighbor who was friendly with Ford. Barras asked Johnson about the porch incident.
Ford walked to Johnson and asked the same question.
“He said, ‘Why the F were you on my porch, N-word,’” though he used the abbreviated words in their entirety, Cobb testified.
Allan asked Cobb whether Johnson said anything in response.
“He did not have time to respond before Stanley shot,” Cobb testified.
Allan prosecuted the case with Tarrant County Assistant Criminal District Attorney Taylor Volesky.
Ford was represented by defense attorneys Paul Belew and David Singleton.
Belew encouraged the jurors to review during deliberation the video recording of Cedillo’s interview to appreciate his client’s state of mind. The recording was shown to the jury during the state’s case. Matters are “not always cut and dried,” Belew argued in his closing. The defense attorneys suggested the complex where the killing occurred and the section of the city in which it is located is beset by crime and a place where, Belew said, hood justice is in effect.
Prosecutors twice played an audio recording of the call to 911 Cobb made to report the shooting. A call-taker struggled to get Cobb, through howls of grief, to say the address.
Dr. Tera Jones, a forensic pathologist who is a deputy Tarrant County medical examiner, testified that a report prepared by another physician found that Johnson died of a shotgun wound to the left side of the chest and a shotgun wound to the armpit area.
As X-ray images were displayed for jurors, Jones referred to pellets embedded in tissue in his body.
Dr. Marc Krouse performed the Johnson autopsy and wrote the resulting report. A month before Johnson died, Krouse misidentified as a surgical stab a gunshot wound in a homicide case, Krouse’s colleagues concluded.
Krouse’s blunders in the September 2020 case led to the expiration without renewal of his Tarrant County employment contract. Krouse’s work has become a concern in homicide prosecutions since his departure in April 2021 from the medical examiner’s office.
In an audit, 41 of Krouse’s autopsies were examined, and a total of about 50 mistakes were found in 27 of them. In most cases, the mistakes did not change the determination of the cause or the manner of death.
No surveillance camera recorded the Johnson shooting, Cedillo testified.
The identity of the shooter was never in question at trial.
In the interview with Cedillo during which the suspect asked for a cigarette, Ford recounted conflict with Johnson and confessed to shooting him.
The defendant said Johnson possessed a screwdriver and knife when he was on the porch and intended to break into the apartment. Prosecutors suggested Ford concocted the false account.
Ford told Cedillo that Johnson had previously said he would rape Ford’s children.
The defendant said he “lost it,” and approached and questioned Johnson, who smacked his lips, laughed and said ‘[expletive] you,’ Ford told Cedillo.
Ford described firing at Johnson as the victim was on his back.
Ford was guilty of evidence tampering, Allan and Volesky argued, because Ford told Cedillo he disassembled the shotgun he used to shoot Johnson and threw it into Lake Worth. Ford was prohibited from possessing a firearm because of a 2009 felony cocaine sales conviction.
Johnson was the half-brother of Mo Bamba, a Los Angeles Lakers player and former University of Texas basketball player.
Johnson in 2017 accused his younger brother of NCAA violations and said Bamba should not be playing college basketball. Johnson alleged Bamba had accepted money and gifts from a financial adviser in Michigan.
Bamba cut Johnson from his basketball career and created a rift. NCAA officials found no violations, and Bamba was permitted to play.
This story was originally published May 11, 2023 at 8:43 PM.
