A man from Rhode Island, once famously acknowledged by Pope Leo for surviving a near-death experience as a newborn deprived of oxygen for over an hour, has found himself in legal trouble. Tyquan Johnson has been apprehended due to his alleged involvement in a recent double shooting incident.
Nineteen-year-old Johnson was taken into custody by a US Marshals fugitive task force in Virginia on Wednesday morning. This arrest follows allegations from the Newport Police Department that he shot two individuals in Newport, Rhode Island.
The shooting occurred on July 19, and after the incident, Johnson reportedly fled to Virginia, prompting law enforcement to issue an arrest warrant to secure his capture.
Fortunately, the victims involved in the shooting sustained injuries not considered life-threatening, as confirmed by the police.
Authorities have announced that they are in search of a second person for questioning in relation to the shooting. However, they have yet to reveal the identity of this individual.
Johnson has been charged with felony assault with a firearm and firing in a compact area, police said.
The arrest comes almost exactly a year after Pope Leo XIV declared Johnson’s 2007 birth the first miracle of his papacy and the first ever recognized miracle in Rhode Island, the Boston Globe reported.
The stunning connection came to light when law enforcement released his arrest warrant with Johnson’s photo, name and date of birth matching those of the man Pope Leo had recognized in July 2025.
Johnson was born prematurely on Jan. 14, 2007, at the former Memorial Hospital of Rhode Island in Pawtucket.
The newborn was suffering from oxygen deprivation and other symptoms that showed no improvement after 65 minutes, leaving doctors with little hope he would survive, according to the Diocese of Providence.
The attending physician, Juan Sanchez-Esteban, prayed to 19th-century Spanish priest Valera Parra for intervention in saving the child’s life, according to the Boston Globe.
Just as Sanchez-Esteban was about to deliver the devastating news to the child’s parents, a nurse stopped him and told him the child “suddenly recovered” and his heart had started beating without medical intervention, he told the outlet.
The doctor — who is from the same region of Spain where Parra was a priest — said the boy should have suffered permanent brain damage from the lack of oxygen, but instead lived a life completely free of any complications.
The investigation into the miracle began more than 10 years ago — with a bishop in Valera Parra’s native Spain sending investigators to Rhode Island in 2014, Father Timothy Reilly, Chancellor of the Diocese of Providence, told WJAR last year.
The Diocese of Providence announced that Pope Leo XIV declared Johnson’s recovery a miracle on July 18, 2025.
“The cool thing is, the more you think about the miracle itself, Father Valera lives in the 19th century,” Reilly said. “He never came to the US. We have no knowledge of him coming here. Never came to Rhode Island. And yet, because the doctor called out and called upon his name for help in the situation back in ’07 on behalf of that little baby, he decided to intervene and ask God for a miracle.”
Parra was a diocesan priest, archpriest and parish priest of Huércal-Overa who lived from 1816 to 1889.