Both perpetrators had previously been imprisoned for armed robbery and Shaw was set to go on trial for a 2020 firearms charge four months after the shooting.

Johnson was declared dead at the scene, while Holley remained on life support at the University of Maryland Shock Trauma Center for a week.

Community members held a vigil for Holley on December 22; she was removed from life support the following day and declared dead soon after.

Holley was the first Baltimore police officer to be killed on duty since Sean Suiter, a detective implicated in the Gun Trace Task Force scandal, who died in 2017.

She claimed her motive for joining was bringing change to an embattled department; she was serving her second year as an officer at the time of the shooting.

[2][3] Around 1:35 a.m. EST on December 16, 2021, Holley, who was working overtime in the Curtis Bay neighborhood of Baltimore, was ambushed and shot while in her patrol car.

[7][9][14] Holley was sent to the University of Maryland Shock Trauma Center, where she was given emergency surgery[10] and put on life support.

[15][8][13] Around 3 a.m. the same day, in the neighborhood of Yale Heights, Johnson, who was in his 1997 Lincoln Town Car on Lucia Avenue's 600 block, was shot six times in the back, injuring his heart, lungs, and spine.

[9][3] In a Baltimore Police Department interview room, Knox gave up his Miranda rights and initially maintained that his car was stolen and that he was not involved in either of the murders.

After two hours, he walked back these claims, admitting that he was at the scene of the shootings, but continuing that Shaw shot Holley and Johnson.

[6] According to a BPD press release, Holley was removed from life support the next day, a week after being shot, and pronounced dead soon after.

She was the first BPD officer to be killed in the line of duty since Sean Suiter, a detective implicated in the Gun Trace Task Force scandal, who was shot in 2017, a day before he was set to go on trial.

[19] Rumors spread on social media that Knox had been related to a man that Holley had previously helped arrest; an investigation by The Baltimore Sun found that while Holley had been listed as a witness during the arrest of attempted murder suspect Eddie Knox, he was from upstate New York and had no known ties to Elliot.

Senator Ben Cardin attended the first viewing, where he described Holley's murder as "a senseless gunning down of a law enforcement officer" and said that "The community has come together.

The senate amended the bill to remove the parole clause and instead expand scholarships for the families of killed public safety workers.

Cassilly also opposed the amendment:[23][24][25] I found it a tough one to swallow because at a time when we face extreme police shortage [sic] and rising violent crime we basically are telling children of law enforcement officers that we're not going to stand behind your parents, but don't worry if mom or dad dies you get free college.

Several officials, including Brandon Scott, Marilyn Mosby, and Michael S. Harrison, and Holley's family, attended and spoke at the dedication.

"[26][27][28] In their 2024 book Confronting Failures of Justice, Paul H. Robinson, Jeffrey Seaman, and Muhammad Sarahne criticized the lack of news coverage on Holley's murder, claiming that while "In 2021, a police officer was about four hundred times more likely to be killed by a Black civilian than an unarmed Black civilian was to be killed by a police officer", major news outlets such as The New York Times failed to report on Holley's murder while reporting on multiple killings by police officers.

[30][31] Kurt Bjorklund, an assistant State's Attorney, claimed that Holley was killed in a hit and that Knox initially lied because he knew he had been caught.