Former Miss. Police Officer Arrested in Slaying of Nurse Who Family Says Had Restraining Order Against Him

A source close to the investigation confirms to PEOPLE that Carlos Collins, 25, was fatally shot and struck to death with a “blunt object”

Carlos Collins had walked into a police precinct in Jackson, Miss., multiple times in the past few months, telling officers that he believed his ex-boyfriend was stalking him, according to his family.

Collins also filed a restraining order against him, Collins’s sister, Alisha Hudson tells PEOPLE. But his ex-boyfriend, Marcus Johnson, was a former Jackson police officer, and the stalking-like behavior continued, she says.

“In my brother’s last months, he was living in hell dealing with Marcus,” Hudson says. “The Jackson Police Department mishandled his case and downplayed the situation. They didn’t care to protect my brother. They protected Marcus.”

On Tuesday, April 9, Jackson police responded to a violent scene at Collins’s apartment, where the 25-year-old was found dead, shot multiple times and hit with a “blunt object,” an insider close to the investigation tells PEOPLE.

Pursuing Johnson in a car chase across state lines, police arrested the 33-year-old on April 10 in Monroe, La., on charges of murder and shooting into an occupied dwelling in connection to Collins’s killing, Detective Tommie Brown tells PEOPLE.

The two had dated for about a year, ending in late 2023, Hudson says.

In the months that followed their breakup, she says Collins found air tags and trackers on his car and that of a friend’s, as well as a ring camera he believed his ex had installed at a vacant apartment nearby to watch him. Once, Hudson says, her brother told her he’d awoken to Johnson watching him sleep.

Collins requested his locks to be changed multiple times, she says, and he spoke to a family pastor about taking self-defense classes.

Now, Hudson keeps going back to a conversation she had with her younger brother Saturday, April 6, as the two nurses walked into Mississippi Baptist Medical Center, where Collins had been nominated multiple times as a top nurse.

“He’s just obsessed,” she recalls Collins saying of his ex, before handing her his phone with ring camera footage that she claims depicted Johnson pacing outside his apartment.

That night, Collins and Hudson went to a Jackson bar to celebrate a family member’s birthday, which, she says, was disrupted when they eyed Johnson seated directly behind them.

“It was obsession, fatal attraction,” Hudson says of Johnson. “He didn't want anyone else to be with my brother.”

PEOPLE contacted the Jackson Police Department, which declined to comment on any restraining order.

Johnson was employed with the Jackson force for eight months in 2013, per police, who said in a press release that he was separated from the department “pending disciplinary actions” and that he “resigned just prior to his termination.”

The following year, Johnson was arrested and charged with false pretense, grand larceny and two counts of impersonating an officer at an apartment building near Jackson State University, The Clarion Ledger reports.

There, allegedly using another officer’s badge number, Johnson wrote a false citation to a female student, and per the report cited by the local newspaper, allegedly attempted to then “hook up” with her in exchange for dismissing that ticket.

At the time, Johnson had an old ticket book and a police radio stolen from his former department, per The Clarion Ledger.

A records search conducted by PEOPLE confirmed a March 31, 2014 arrest, leading to a court case for grand larceny charges, some of which were eventually dismissed. In 2015 Johnson was placed on a pretrial diversion program for the other charges. (Police declined to comment on past charges.)

On his Facebook page, Johnson lists the Jackson Police Department as his current employer. Many of his public posts this year focus on the theme of a crushing break-up that is hard to recover from.

On Wednesday, April 10, Johnson was placed into custody at the Richland Parish Detention Center in Rayville, La., with a pending extradition to Jackson. It is unclear if he's retained an attorney to speak on his behalf.

For more People news, make sure to sign up for our newsletter!

Read the original article on People.