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Pittsburgh man confesses to 2015 homicide that had bothered him for a while

Tom Davidson
| Wednesday, December 4, 2019 4:26 p.m.
Allegheny County Jail
Randy Johnson, 25, of Pittsburgh’s North Side faces charges of criminal homicide, robbery and criminal conspiracy in the 2015 murder of Deron McCray. Pittsburgh police announced the charges against Johnson on Tuesday, Dec. 3, 2019.

A North Side man confessed to a 2015 killing in Pittsburgh’s Northview Heights neighborhood because he’s been bothered by it for a while, police wrote in a criminal complaint.

Randy Johnson, 25, provided a handwritten confession last week to the Nov. 16, 2015, killing of Deron McCray, 23, at a house on Chicago Street in Northview Heights, police said.

Johnson is in Allegheny County Jail awaiting trial on unrelated charges stemming from a March robbery.Staffers at the jail notified Pittsburgh police Nov. 27 about the confession, and authorities interviewed Johnson on Monday, police said. During the interview, Johnson said he used an assault rifle to shoot McCray in the chest, according to the complaint.

Johnson, his 24-year-old brother, Joshua, and another man who Johnson said he could not identify went to the house, knocked on the door and heard a man racking a gun on the other side, according to the complaint.

McCray opened the door, the three other men rushed in and they began to wrestle around, Johnson told police. When McCray reached for the gun in his waistband, Johnson said he moved his brother away and fired one shot at McCray, according to the complaint.

They ran away, and Johnson said he wrapped the rifle in a sweatshirt and ditched it in the woods in Northview Heights, according to the complaint.

Joshua Johnson pleaded guilty to third-degree murder, robbery and conspiracy in connection to the case in 2016. At the time of the plea, Joshua told the judge he’d only agreed to commit the robbery.

Randy Johnson told police the men thought McCray had “20 bricks and an ounce of hard” — meaning 1,000 stamp bags of heroin and an ounce of crack cocaine, according to the complaint. They also knew McCray had a gun, Randy Johnson told police, according to the complaint.

Police said that Randy Johnson told them he decided he wanted the gun and drugs.

Bail had been set for $75,000 for Randy Johnson as he awaits trial on the unrelated robbery charges. For the homicide and robbery charges in the homicide case, District Judge Ralph Kaiser set bail at $1 million, according to online court records.

He did not have an attorney listed in court records.


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