Richard and Tianias Johnson were supposed to be picking up some pans to use for Thanksgiving dinner.
Her son, Michael Dean, was expecting them.
But when the Johnsons arrived at Dean’s house in the 800 block of Benwood Avenue in Stowe on Nov. 22, 2023, he didn’t answer the door.
Richard Johnson could hear Dean’s cellphone ringing inside, he told a jury on Tuesday, and then he spotted a spent silver shell casing on the top of the front porch steps.
Worried about Dean’s well-being, Johnson and one of his stepson’s friends kicked in the side door.
Inside, they found the 26-year-old down on the living room floor.
“I saw my baby on his stomach,” Tianias Johnson testified Tuesday. “I didn’t know what was wrong with him.”
Her husband rolled Dean over so his wife, who has worked for 30 years in the medical field, could perform CPR.
Then they saw he had been shot in the head.
“I knew he was gone,” Tianias Johnson said. “I just laid on my child and screamed.”
On Tuesday, the Johnsons were the first two prosecution witnesses called in the criminal homicide trial of Cy-Miar Amari Woods.
Woods, 18, of McKees Rocks is accused of firing a single shot through Dean’s front door that afternoon, killing him.
A distinctive hoodie
Allegheny County Assistant District Attorney Matt Goddard told the jury in his opening statement Tuesday that Dean’s slaying was captured on a video doorbell camera.
The video shows a person wearing a mask pull out a gun, Goddard said, and then there is a sound of the door slamming closed.
Then, he continued, the masked person fires one shot.
Although Goddard conceded the video is too grainy to identify anyone, it clearly showed another man on the porch that day, wearing a distinctive Nike hoodie, as well as the gray Dodge Charger the attackers fled in.
Using license-plate tracking cameras, police were able to track the car to Ace’s Tavern in McKees Rocks, where additional video from the bar showed the face of the man in the hoodie.
That man, Goddard told the jury, is Arrmon Hagans, who was arrested with the murder weapon a week later at an Extended Stay America hotel near the airport.
Hagans, the prosecutor continued, will testify this week that Dean’s killer was Woods.
No other evidence?
According to the criminal complaint against Hagans, he told police he picked up two younger men that afternoon near Sto-Rox High School for a jitney ride.
Hagans told them, the complaint said, that he wanted to buy marijuana, and the younger teens were interested, too, so they walked with him to Dean’s house.
Goddard did not mention any of those details in his opening statement. He did, however, tell the jury that, at the time of the shooting, Woods was just 15, and Hagans was 43.
“That does not change the fact the defendant murdered Michael Dean,” Goddard said.
But defense attorney Randall McKinney told the jury in his opening that the prosecution’s case against Woods rises and falls with Hagans’ testimony.
“There’s nothing else,” McKinney said. “There’s nothing else that ties Cy-Miar Woods to the murder of Michael Dean.”
McKinney told the jury that Hagans was a drug dealer, and that Hagans’ plan that day was to rob Dean, who also sold marijuana.
Hagans was supposed to be a distraction to Dean, while two others were to barge through the door.
But Dean realized what was happening and closed the door, thwarting the robbery.
‘He blamed a child’
Although Hagans was arrested a week after the shooting, Woods was not charged for nearly six months.
And that was only after Hagans pinned the blame on Woods, McKinney said.
“That’s par for the course for Mr. Hagans because he likes to use and take advantage of kids,” the defense attorney continued.
McKinney said that Hagans had several neighborhood kids selling drugs for him.
“When he realized he was facing a life sentence, he needed someone to blame,” McKinney continued. “He didn’t blame the actual shooter because, obviously, that person is dangerous.
“He blamed a child — a 10th-grader.”
McKinney told the jury that Hagans is motivated to testify to save himself.
“It will become abundantly clear to you early on in his testimony … that he’s lying.”
