Fugitive in Slayings Is Arrested

Three months after he fled Inglewood Juvenile Court while standing trial for a double murder, a gang member from Compton was arraigned Wednesday on charges of felony escape.

Leon Durell Hobley, 18, was arrested shortly after 11 a.m. Wednesday at a Hawthorne motel by detectives with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, said Sheriff’s Deputy Mary Landreth of the Sheriff’s Information Bureau.

Authorities had been searching for Hobley since July 31, when he slipped out of his handcuffs and jumped a fence as sheriff’s deputies were escorting him from a van to the courthouse.

Hobley was originally charged with two counts of murder, one count of kidnaping and one count of robbery in connection with the slayings of DeMon Johnson, 20, of Compton, and Major Blackman, 21, of Gardena.

The two men were sitting in a car behind a bank in Redondo Beach on June 8 when a gunman approached, shot and killed Johnson and pulled him out of the car. The suspect then drove away with Blackman still in the car. Blackman was found in a Los Angeles alley a few hours later with two gunshot wounds in the head. He died six days later at Martin Luther King Jr.-Drew Medical Center.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Lori-Ann Jones said Hobley’s escape came as a shock, but that his capture this week was “the best news I’ve gotten in a long time.”

Hobley, who was 17 at the time of the slayings, will appear before a juvenile court judge in the next three weeks to determine if he should stand trial as an adult.