Demetris Johnson made headlines in 2011 when prosecutors charged him as an adult at age 16 with fatally shooting a man in a parking lot near his home. A jury acquitted him.
As an adult, he continued to collect criminal cases. He was convicted twice in 2015 for illegal weapons possession. Then in 2021, while wearing an ankle monitor for ongoing armed criminal and escape cases, he allegedly killed a man at his family’s apartment complex, about a half-mile from the Chicago Police Department.
On Monday, Judge William Gamboney sentenced Johnson to 60 years in prison for that murder.
Prosecutors said Johnson’s mother called CPD to their apartment in the 3500 block of South Cottage Grove Avenue because he had a gun and was experiencing mental illness on the afternoon of Jan. 27, 2021. His mother told police Johnson heard voices.
Another caller reported hearing gunshots inside the building, and security officers found 26-year-old Gino Dameron dead in an elevator with multiple gunshot wounds.
Surveillance video showed Johnson carrying a gun in the building’s lobby before the shooting and then carrying a gun in a stairwell. Cameras also captured Johnson running out the back of the building when police arrived, prosecutors said.
While officers were investigating the murder, they received a tip that the killer had boarded a southbound CTA bus on Cottage Grove and had just gotten off at 46th Street, according to a CPD report. Officers arrived on the scene and found Johnson wearing clothing identical to that of the shooter, police said.
He also wore an electronic monitoring ankle bracelet in the ongoing gun case, even though he had previously escaped electronic monitoring in that case, court records show.
This armed common criminal case, which is still pending, stemmed from a traffic stop in the Washington Heights neighborhood on April 29, 2018.
Police say a car came to a stop and Johnson shot out of the passenger seat while holding his waistband. Officers chased him and returned him to the vehicle, where they reportedly found a loaded ammunition magazine lying next to the car. Firefighters were called to the scene so officers could use a ladder to search the roof of a nearby building that Johnson had run past. Police said a firefighter found a gun on the roof.
According to a CPD report, the gun had one round in the chamber but no magazine. Investigators said the magazine found next to the car fit the gun on the roof, and the bullets matched the one found in the chamber.
Prosecutors charged Johnson with being an armed habitual criminal, unlawful use of a weapon by a felon with a prior firearms conviction, and failure to register as a weapons offender.
He was released on electronic monitoring after posting a $3,000 deposit. Prosecutors later charged him with escape after he failed to appear in court in September 2019, and a judge ordered his arrest.
But another judge, whose name was not clearly identified in court records, reduced the monetary conditions of release in June 2020 and allowed Johnson to return home under electronic monitoring after his aunt posted $20,000, records show.
Both the armed common crime cases and the escape cases are still pending.
But earlier this year, a jury convicted Johnson of two counts of murder in Dameron’s slaying. On Monday, Gamboney handed him the 60-year prison sentence, court records show. Johnson must serve 100% of the sentence.
Since being jailed on murder charges, Johnson has continued to deal with cases while in custody. In one case, he was charged twice with aggravated assault on a peace officer. Three others, filed separately, charged him with one count each of aggravated assault on a peace officer, and another accused him of being a felon in possession of a weapon in a correctional facility. Prosecutors dismissed all of those cases on Monday.
According to one concurrent Chicago Tribune reportIn January 2011, prosecutors charged Johnson in adult court with killing 23-year-old Zohntill Lemon in a parking lot in the 3500 block of South Lake Park Avenue, less than a block from where Dameron was killed. He was eventually acquitted.
When police arrested Johnson in that case, he was already being held in the county juvenile detention center on charges of aggravated battery on a Dunbar High School school official, the Tribune reported.
