Daniel Tapia said he just stared when he got news Tuesday (April 16) that one of his clients was shot dead outside his Algiers apartment.
In Tapia’s line of work, coordinating a prison re-entry program in New Orleans, he’s encountered clients who have shown red flags. Jamonte Johnson wasn’t one of them.
NOPD spokesman Aaron Looney said there’s no new information to release about the investigation, and those close to Johnson are bewildered about who and why someone would kill him.
“He was absolutely a positively perfect example, from the day he stepped back on the street. Never stopped doing the right thing,” Tapia said. “And he just got shot down like a dog in front of his house.”
New Orleans police responding to a shooting after midnight on Tuesday found a 30-year-old man who had been shot more than once lying outside his doorway in the 3100 block of Rue Parc Fontaine, the department said. An ambulance took him to a hospital, where he died.
Tapia, a case manager for Orleans Criminal District Court’s Reentry Program and a peer mentor for The First 72+, along with Johnson’s mother Doris Jones, identified Johnson as the man who was killed. The First 72+ provides housing and other holistic services to people freshly out of prison.
Johnson returned to New Orleans from Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola about two years ago, after completing a sentence for drug possession, Tapia said.
He first met Johnson at Angola, when Tapia went there to meet incoming clients. Based on Tapia’s first impression of Johnson, Tapia said he thought, "What the hell he did to end up in jail?”
Johnson’s small frame, glasses and clean-shaven look reminded him of Steve Urkle, he said, referring to the 1990s TV character in the sitcom “Family Matters.” The coordinator of the prison’s auto mechanic program raved about Johnson as a student.
“I had to argue with (Johnson) a couple of times to get him to stop calling me Mister,” Tapia said.
Kelly Orians, First 72+ codirector and cofounder and director of Rising Foundations, which provides zero-interest loans to people who’ve returned from prison, first met Johnson in a courtroom.
Johnson approached her to ask about access to the loan program for his friend. He was professional, Orians said, and she assumed he was a colleague from another re-entry program. She didn’t realize he was a client until everyone sat down at the start of court and Johnson took a seat with the other parolees in the re-entry program.
Of her 10 children, Jones said, Johnson kept the family grounded.
“He was my rock.”
Jones, who works as a parent advocate for a program tied to the Louisiana Department of Children and Family Services, did not know the extent of her son’s injuries when she got a call that he had been shot. Her first thought, she said, was “Not my son. Not again.”
Her older son, Jason Todd, was shot to death in 2007. It wasn’t until Jones arrived at the hospital Tuesday that she learned Johnson had died.
‘Horrible’: Algiers man found fatally shot outside his apartment doorway
Raising and providing for his 10-year-old son was Johnson’s priority, said his mother and the staff at The First 72. Johnson worked two jobs, as a mechanic at Premier Nissan and as a barber. The family grew up in New Orleans, where Johnson attended high school at John McDonogh before they relocated to the Mississippi Delta in 2005 when their home flooded after the levees broke during Hurricane Katrina. He attended school in Greenville, his mother said, and earned his GED in prison.
A national news outlet was slated to interview Johnson in the coming weeks about Angola’s auto mechanic program, Tapia said. He was handpicked for the interview because of all he had accomplished.
Johnson rarely, if ever, raised his voice and took on the role of keeping others in the program calm – whether they were riled by a judge’s order or another arduous hurdle of life after prison, Tapia said. When Johnson spoke of his past life dealing drugs, he avoided details or words that would glamorize the lifestyle, Tapia said.
“He would always refer to it as ‘being dumb.’ He didn’t’ want to give a name to it,” Tapia said.
After learning of Johnson’s death, Tapia spent Tuesday at Jones’ home, where he brought the family Manchu chicken and put his arm around Jamonte Jr. when he cried. In the hours since learning Johnson was killed, Tapia said his thoughts “almost constantly” return to Jamonte Jr. growing up without his father, because Johnson took the role so seriously.
“It’s heartbreaking,” Tapia said.
Johnson kept his head down and took care of his family, focusing hard on not putting himself or anyone close to him at any risk, Orians said. Tapia said he’s trying not to read too much into their star client’s death, but has wondered, “Is it a curse?”
Johnson is the third of the First 72+ and/or Rising Foundations clients who has died from gun violence, Orians said. As an organization that helps people rebuild their lives after incarceration, they’re forced to confront the killer’s fate.
“There’s another young man that’s out there in the streets now that is responsible for causing this much pain and facing a potential life without parole or several decades in prison,” Orians said. “Another family that’s going to lose somebody because of something awful that happened.”
Orians said Johnson’s death has forced her team to face difficult truths.
They tell their clients if they to do the right thing, stay positive, go to all their court dates, pass drug screens, take advantage of programs and get a job, “it’ll all work out, you’ll stay out of trouble and you’ll be safe,” Orians said. Johnson did all that.
While they must preach positivity, she said, “situations like this rob of us hope and rob us in the confidence of believing in that.”
“There’s an arrogance,” she said, that she’s had to face. “An arrogance to think we can do everything to protect people, and we can’t.”
Orians set up a Gofundme account to raise money for Johnson’s funeral service. (Donate here.)
Anyone with information about Johnson’s death is asked to contact NOPD Homicide Detective Joseph Jefferson, the lead detective in the case, at 504-658-5300 or provide tips anonymously through Crimestoppers at 504-822-1111.
https://www.nola.com
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