A Gary man was acquitted Friday of attempted murder in the shooting of a man and his 5-month pregnant girlfriend blocks away from the Gary Metro Center.
It was the second acquittal and third major legal victory this year for Jarod Johnson, 24.
His defense lawyer argued weak Gary Police detective work, victim stories that didn’t match and the male victim who didn’t show up for trial were reasons to acquit him.
A jury agreed after deliberating for about three hours.
Johnson was accused of shooting the couple on June 13, 2017, on 5th Avenue in Gary after waiting for a train to Chicago, court records state.
The man was shot in the face and leg, while his pregnant girlfriend was shot twice in the chest near 5th Avenue and Madison Street. The man told police he thought Johnson shot him because “Jarod’s family thinks he snitched and told police about Jarod Johnson’s brother’s location prior to him being arrested by the Chicago Police Department.”
Deputy Prosecuting Attorney David Rooda told jurors in closing arguments it was a “betrayal,” because the man and Johnson were friends for a couple years, the victim knew Johnson’s mother and at one point was reluctant to implicate him.
He acknowledged the two victims’ stories had changed a bit over time, but they both consistently implicated Johnson as the shooter. Johnson shot both at “point blank range,” continuing to fire as they ran away, Rooda said.
There were several problems with the case, defense lawyer Mark Gruenhagen said.
The male victim didn’t show up after police and lawyers couldn’t find him, he said. Prosecutors and court staff read his initial depositions taken in 2017 and 2018.
Gary Police detectives failed to thoroughly investigate — forwarding criminal charges after largely just casing the scene and speaking to the victims, the lawyer said.
No witnesses were interviewed, no one at the train station was questioned to corroborate if they saw Johnson return after dropping them off. No physical evidence or DNA put him there.
The stories from the victims didn’t match, he said. The male victim said he spent the morning going to the beach with Johnson, while the woman said she was in bed that morning with him. The woman testified they planned to head to Chicago to see her sister, while the man said they would see his sister.
“At every turn, their stories didn’t match,” Gruenhagen said.
They planned to spend the day in Chicago, but didn’t have a train ticket and only $4 in cash taken from their clothes between them, Gruenhagen said. Asked why they left the platform, the woman admitted years later it was to smoke marijuana. Gruenhagen alleged they were planning a robbery or auto theft that went wrong that day and blamed Johnson, who dropped them off at the station, for the shooting.
Rooda later rejected that argument. No police report had indicated it, he said. Johnson pressured the male victim not to cooperate, he said.
“Why would you do that if you simply want your friend to tell the truth,” Rooda said.
The trial was one of a string of related cases that implicated Johnson. Legal rules barred jurors from learning of outside charges.
Two years after the 2017 shooting, Johnson, his mother, Patricia Carrington, and brother Jaron Johnson were accused of kidnapping and shooting a woman hours before trial in an attempt to find out the location of the female victim in the 2017 case, an affidavit alleges.
They allegedly found the female witness walking home from her job at a fast-food restaurant, then shoved her in a van, duct-taped socks over her eyes, later shooting her multiple times behind an abandoned house and leaving her for dead, according to court records.
Jarod Johnson was charged in Lake County with the second woman’s shooting before it was moved to federal court.
After his federal acquittal, Lake Superior Judge Salvador Vasquez granted the defense’s motion to dismiss revived county charges for the witness shooting, saying he could not be charged twice for the same crime.
Carrington and his brother, Jaron Johnson, pleaded guilty in federal court.
