Johnson, who had played basketball at Simon Gratz High School, was pronounced dead an hour later.
Henderson called 9-1-1 and 11 days later identified the shooter as Bobby Hoyle, 26, from Cedarbrook. Hoyle, who had spent time in state prison on two firearms-possession convictions, was then arrested.
But, on Aug. 10, just before Hoyle's preliminary hearing on murder and weapon charges - with Henderson as the star witness - Henderson dropped a bomb.
He privately told Assistant District Attorney Ed Cameron and police detectives that he could no longer identify Hoyle as the shooter, according to the victim's mother, Rochelle Horton-Nichols.
"All their mouths dropped," Horton-Nichols said, recalling a conversation she had with Cameron the next day. Henderson allegedly told Cameron and the detectives that he "couldn't see him [the shooter]. It was too dark."
Without strong-enough evidence to hold Hoyle, Cameron had to withdraw the prosecution, Horton-Nichols said.
"I said [to Cameron], 'How does a police officer all of a sudden recant his story? Was he threatened? Was he paid?' " she said she told the prosecutor.
"If he's [Henderson's] saying [Hoyle] wasn't the shooter, he let four months go past," she said, frustrated. "Now, [authorities are] telling me they have to start from scratch. This is upsetting."
Police Homicide Capt. James Clark said that recently he had the case transferred to his Special Investigations Unit. Police still believe Hoyle was the man who fatally shot Johnson, Clark said.
"The investigation is ongoing to try to prove that," he said.
Meanwhile, Hoyle remains locked up in the city's Curran-Fromhold Correctional Facility on active state parole and county probation detainers, said prisons spokesman Bob Eskind.
'I don't have anything to hide'
