‘He was trying to protect his mom.' Montgomery County man charged with fatal stabbing of mother’s boyfriend

Like so many times in their 10 years together, Johnny Johnson came home early Saturday morning having had too much to drink, agitated, and itching for a fight, said his girlfriend, Chiquita Brown.

“A lot of times when he became intoxicated ... he wanted to fight and argue,” the 46-year-old Montgomery County woman said in an interview Sunday.

A witness to much of the aggression — including an assault on Brown in 2013 that she said left her with a blackened left eye and a facial cut requiring six stitches — was her only child, Jules Demetris Ross Jr., 26. Brown said he is a schizophrenic under a doctor’s care since he was 18.

Ross was again present Saturday when Johnson, 49, returned to their Upper Dublin home around 2:30 a.m. After two hours of Johnson cursing her, calling her names and, at one point, threatening to knock her out, Brown said, her son burst into the bedroom and stabbed him in the neck with a long kitchen knife.

“He was trying to protect his mom,” a sobbing Brown said Sunday as her son remained held without bail at the Montgomery County Correctional Facility on charges of first- and third-degree murder and possessing an instrument of crime.

When police arrived at their home on the 100 block of Girard Avenue in the North Hills section of Upper Dublin about 5 a.m. Saturday, Brown said, she and her sister, Kinsey Scott, 21, were using a towel to apply pressure on Johnson’s gushing neck wound. When Brown got downstairs in the four-bedroom home owned and still occupied by her parents and three other family members, her son was in handcuffs.

According to an affidavit of probable cause, Ross admitted stabbing Johnson, a man with an extensive criminal history dating from his teens, and putting the knife he used in a drawer in the kitchen. The weapon was recovered with apparent blood on it, according to the affidavit.

Johnson was taken to Jefferson Health’s Abington Hospital, where he was pronounced dead, according to a joint statement Sunday morning by Montgomery County District Attorney Kevin R. Steele and Upper Dublin Police Deputy Chief Daniel P. Wade. An autopsy revealed he died from multiple cut and stab wounds.

The affidavit said Ross and his mother gave differing accounts of events leading up to the stabbing, describing them as follows:

Brown told detectives she and Johnson were arguing in their bedroom when Ross knocked at the door and told Johnson to “cut the noise.” Brown told her son “they were fine and just arguing.” As she walked from the bedroom, Ross charged past her and accused Johnson of “hitting my mom." She then heard Johnson asking for help and saw him bleeding from the neck and her son holding a knife.

Ross told detectives he kicked the bedroom door open and saw Johnson standing over his mother, who was seated on the bed. Ross said Johnson started “swinging on me," and that is when he stabbed him. Johnson was unarmed.

During a phone interview Sunday afternoon, Brown said Johnson, who was black, had spent most of his adult life incarcerated, including for assaulting a white man who allegedly called him a racial slur and later died of his injuries. She said the attack occurred around York, Pa., though records of such a case could not be immediately found Sunday. Johnson was on parole from that sentence, Brown said, when “he hit me so hard he blackened my eye and I had six stitches to my face.”

At her mother’s urging, Brown reported the assault to police, and Johnson was sent back to prison. She could not recall for how long.

Criminal records show that Johnson had been arrested at least 11 times in Montgomery County since the 1990s and had pleaded or been found guilty of charges including driving under the influence, marijuana possession, criminal trespassing, and indecent assault.

Brown said she never gave up on him because “when he was sober, it was like a whole different person.” But that person, she said, was a rarity, with Johnson drinking just about daily, preferring Hennessy cognac and Olde English malt liquor. When he worked, which wasn’t often, Johnson, the father of two sons, one of whom was a homicide victim, did housing demolition and moving, Brown said.

She supported him as a home health aide, though she has been out of work due to neck and back injuries resulting from a car accident in December, Brown said.

Her son, a graduate of Upper Moreland High School, has been unable to work because of his mental illness, Brown said. A preliminary hearing has been scheduled for Feb. 15 before District Court Judge Patricia Zaffarano.

Brown is hoping for an outcome that gets her son — a lover of rap music and once an accomplished competitive swimmer — the care he needs.

“If he has to be put away, I’d rather see him be in a hospital instead of a jail,” she said.

As for Johnson’s death?

“I feel confused, angry. I’m hurt,” she said, crying. “I loved him with all my heart.”

Staff writer Kathy Boccella contributed to this article.