Fayetteville barber's 2005 shooting death still a mystery

Seven years after a Fayetteville barber was shot and killed, police are renewing their efforts, once again, to generate leads to find his killer.

Posted 5:28 p.m. Nov 19, 2012 — Updated 6:28 p.m. Nov 19, 2012

FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. — Seven years after a Fayetteville barber was shot and killed, police are again renewing their efforts to generate leads to find his killer.

As part of their annual push, Fayetteville police investigators and members of Creg Johnson's family handed out fliers Monday in neighborhoods along Yadkin Road – the area where a customer found Johnson's body on the floor inside Line Up Barber Shop on Nov. 20, 2005.

Johnson, 35, had been shot five times with a 9 mm handgun.

"Some of our information that we are gathering is showing that Mr. Johnson most likely let someone in the barber shop that was most likely acquainted with him," homicide detective Michael Hardin said in a video posted Monday on the Fayetteville Police Department's website.

Johnson was last seen inside the barber shop cutting hair around 9:30 p.m. on Nov. 19, 2005. He was known to work late, Hardin said, and would not have let someone inside at night that he did not know.

Police also said Monday that Johnson had also been briefly at a party on Kelmscot Court, near the business, that night.

Anyone with information is asked to contact the Fayetteville Police Department at 910-433-1856 or Crime Stoppers at 910-483-8477. Rewards of up to $10,000 are being offered for information leading to an arrest and conviction in the case.

"He was a gentle, kind man. He was a father," Johnson's uncle, Vernice Johnson, said in the police video. "Please help the family and the friends to close this case so we can let us move on with our lives."

Speaking to WRAL News last year, investigators said they believe the case can be solved but that an unwritten "no-snitch rule of the streets" has hampered their efforts.

"A man was murdered in cold blood," detective Chuck Dew said. "For friends (of this victim) to keep this on their conscience, for folks who know certain things that might be a vital key piece of information to this investigation, to hold on to that is just baffling to me."

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