Youth, 17, Charged in Two Slayings

A 17-year-old was charged Wednesday with the June slaying of two men behind a bank across the street from the Galleria at South Bay, and prosecutors said they will seek to try the teen-ager as an adult.

The suspect, whose name was not released, pleaded not guilty in Inglewood Municipal Court to the shootings. He was arrested last week after detectives from the Los Angeles County sheriff’s gang enforcement team found him in East Compton.

He is charged with the June 8 shooting deaths of DeMon Johnson, 20, of Compton, and Major Blackman, 21, of Gardena, as they sat in Johnson’s car parked at the Bank of America on Hawthorne Boulevard in Redondo Beach.

“Apparently, he needed a ride home, so he stole the car and murdered the people in it,” said district attorney spokeswoman Sandi Gibbons.

Johnson’s body was found outside the bank; Blackman, who had been shot twice in the head, was dumped in an alley in an unincorporated area just outside Carson. The green Camaro was found abandoned and burned in the unincorporated Willowbrook area north of Compton.

Gibbons said that, were the suspect older, the circumstances of the crime would make him eligible for the death penalty upon conviction. But because he is only 17, she said, the maximum penalty, even if he is tried as an adult, would be life in prison without possibility of parole.

He was charged with two counts of murder and one count each of kidnaping and robbery. He also was charged with a special circumstance count of committing murder during a robbery, under which he could be imprisoned for life.

Gibbons said the youth is being held without bail. A hearing on his fitness for trial as an adult is scheduled for July 24 in Inglewood Juvenile Court.