Kevin McDarin Johnson pleaded innocent Thursday to first-degree premeditated murder while armed in the choking death of Detra Martin on February 20.
Police found Martin, 48, late at night in a locked bedroom unconscious and strangled to death.
Before she was killed, charging documents say, Martin and Johnson had a heated confrontation over a loan given to Martin by a male friend.
At a preliminary hearing, MPD Detective Carter Adams testified that police interviewed Johnson about what happened the night of the murder. In that interview, Johnson said he wasn’t in his right state of mind. Johnson claimed that he left the house, and Martin was still alive at the time, according to Adams. Johnson described Martin as gagging while laying on the bed, Adams recounted.
Video footage from the apartment complex shows Johnson entering the building alone, hours before the murder and leaving later with a large black bag. He is seen driving away from the complex in his purple conversion van, documents say.
A witness who lived with Martin said it spoke to her on the phone that evening. Eventually, the witness knocked on Martin’s bedroom door and received no answer, court documents say. The witness then tried calling Martin’s phone and opening her bedroom door, only to find it locked. Martin was found dead at approximately 10:40 p.m.
Two days before her death, Johnson told Martin that he loved her and if he couldn’t have her, then no one would, the witness told police.
Johnson is scheduled for a status hearing January 23, 2015 at 9:45 a.m. before Judge Rhonda Reid Winston.
A copy of the indictment is embedded below:
