Chicago police were questioning a 17-year-old boy in connection with last week’s fatal shooting of Damarion Johnson and Jassen Cho, according to department representatives and police sources.
Police arrested the teen Wednesday afternoon on the city’s West side, sources said. Charges had not been announced as of Thursday morning.
Cho, 38, was driving in the 200 block of North Homan Avenue in the East Garfield Park neighborhood with Johnson, 18, in the rear passenger seat when a gray SUV pulled up alongside their car around 8:30 p.m. May 7 and someone inside began firing, according to a police report obtained by the Tribune. Both men were pronounced dead within about 30 minutes of the shooting, according to the Cook County medical examiner’s office.
Family and friends said Cho was a financial analyst, but had been driving for Uber on the side. They described him as funny, smart and adventurous and said he and his girlfriend had been looking forward to their first anniversary the weekend after he was killed.
Johnson, a senior at Christ the King Jesuit College Prep High School in Austin, had transferred to the school for his final year of high school to pursue his dream of becoming a college basketball player. His coach, Troy Caldwell, told the Tribune he’d been made a captain three games into his first season with the team.
At the time he was killed, Caldwell said Johnson had been weeks away from a trip to Wisconsin, where he’d been preparing to sign an agreement to play for a college there.
“Things were lining up for him,” Caldwell said. “The future was lining up. I think he felt that and knew that. That’s why this is so tragic.”
Family and friends of the two men didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment Thursday morning.
