When Micah Xavier Johnson pulled the trigger on his SKS semi-automatic assault rifle in downtown Dallas on the night of July 7, he killed five policemen and wounded seven others, along with two civilians who were participating in a peaceful Black Lives Matter rally.
In doing so, he also forever changed the lives of his own family in Texas and in Simpson County, Mississippi.
Johnson's mother, Delphine McDonald Johnson, 5O, of Mesquite, Texas, is a graduate of Magee High School.
Delphine's parents, Micah Johnson's grandparents, are the Rev. Havard McDonald and Minnie McDonald, long-time residents of Magee. Havard McDonald grew up in Simpson County, owned Douglas Diamonds on Main Street for many years and pastored a church. He closed the business several years ago when he began a new pastorate in Hattiesburg.
Havard McDonald came to the Magee Courier after returning from Dallas, where he had driven to be with his daughter over the weekend. She had been notified that her son Micah had been identified as the shooter of 14 people and had subsequently been killed by a robot-detonated bomb blast after negotiations with law enforcement resulted in his refusal to give himself up without being harmed.
He had reportedly told negotiators that he "wanted to kill white people, especially white officers" and that he acted alone. From the positioning of the shots, police first thought that several shooters were involved.
"We had no choice but to end the standoff," said Dallas Police Chief David Brown.
"I think he knew he wouldn't come out alive," said his grandfather in Magee on Monday.
Delphine Johnson was herself picked up by police at about 1 a.m. Saturday morning from the home in Mesquite that she shared with Micah and a younger son. She was interrogated, and the police came back to the home with her later to search Micah's room, where they reportedly found bombmaking materials, ballistic vests, rifles, ammunition and a personal journal of combat tactics.
McDonald said that the family has since been bombarded with requests for interviews and harassed by reporters from all the mainstream media and even from overseas media. But they had refused to grant interviews except to one media representative whom they invited to a memorial service held for Micah Johnson at his mother's home on Sunday after his death. The interview aired Monday evening.
"I told Delphine they were going to beat on the door and hound us until we let one of them in. But there's no telling what they will say in that report," McDonald said. "Reporters take what you say and twist it. They interrogate you more than interview you. It turns you against the media.”
McDonald reported that he had to call the police to remove reporters from his daughter’s property so that the family could get in and out of their home.
"People are saying everything about (Micah), but they don't really know anything about him. What he did was wrong, but I want people to know both sides of the story. I wanted to tell this story to people I trust, people I know in my own town," McDonald continued.
One reporter called for an interview, saying "I want to talk to you about what went wrong when this child was being raised." McDonald replied, "Maybe you ought to ask me instead, what didn't go right? Did a child go wrong or did they fail to pass legislation in Washington, D. C., and do other things to make things go right for young men like him?" He then refused the interview.
In his own statement, McDonald said that his grandson's upbringing was normal. He was born in Collins, Miss., and the family moved to Texas when he was about 5 years old. Delphine and the two boys’ father, James Johnson, divorced at about that time. Johnson remarried, but he never deserted the family, McDonald said. "He was always involved in their lives."
Poverty, often given as a reason for young people to turn to violence, was not an issue in the Johnson family. James Johnson works in telecommunications, and Delphine Johnson works in the financial industry.
McDonald said that racism was not the issue either. "People are calling him a racist," he said, "but he wasn't. His step-mother, a teacher, was white and had known Micah for 20 years. She said she would have known if he was a racist and he wasn't."
However, something changed what McDonald called "the jolliest, most fun boy you ever knew" at some point during his 20s.
"He was military," said his grandfather. He was in R.O.T.C., and he joined the Army in 2009 after high school He visited his grandparents in Magee on his way to and from Camp Shelby near Hattiesburg, where he went to be trained for a tour of duty in Afghanistan. He was accompanied by a female friend he had met in boot camp. McDonald says the two were inseparable, like brother and sister. She and Johnson were deployed to Afghanistan, he as a carpentry and masonry specialist who saw no combat duty, according to CNN.
However, during his deployment, he was accused of sexual harassment by his female soldier friend.
According to the story Micah Johnson told his grandfather, she was going out with her sergeant, which was prohibited. When Johnson cautioned her about it, word got back to the sergeant, and he ordered the woman to file sexual harassment charges against Johnson. The charge was dropped, but Johnson was quietly removed from the Army with an honorable discharge and came home in July 2014.
"When he came back from Afghanistan, he was never the same," said McDonald. "He spent a week with me in May, and he had gone from a fun person to someone who was just all to himself. I knew there was a problem. I tried to draw him out and give him things to do, minister to him."
McDonald never saw his grandson again after Johnson returned to Texas.
He explained that Johnson came back from Afghanistan with Post Traumatic Distress Syndrome despite the fact that he was not on combat duty. He had sought help from the VA. "They just pushed him to the side," said McDonald, "never helped him or gave him any medication. He just gave up."
He added, "Having to leave the military was one of the most devastating things that ever happened to him. When he was with me in May, he had no job, no desire to go to school, no desire to have a family. . . no reason to live."
McDonald said that in his opinion the major problem in his grandson's life was the amount of injustice he had experienced that he just could not cope with. "He felt like he had been unjustly treated by his friend and the military and unjustly treated by the VA."
That was not the only injustice McDonald said Johnson had suffered.
"It's a terrible time to be a black man," he said. “I’ve learned to cope with it, but these younger people can’t seem to do that.”
He recalled a time when Johnson was taking his autistic younger brother to a health club near their home. They stopped at a restaurant and got sandwiches, which they were eating outside. The restaurant owner noticed them and called the police, reporting "suspicious characters lurking around outside." Police arrived and stuck guns to the boys' necks and were yelling at them when their father showed up. Micah called out "Dad!" The police asked, "Are these your boys?" When they satisfied themselves that the Johnson boys were not "suspicious characters," they let them go.
But the episode marked Micah Johnson, McDonald believes, coming on the heels of his perceived unjust treatment by the military.
"But what really triggered what he did," McDonald said, "was seeing those black men killed by white policemen last week (in Minnesota and Louisiana). These young people watch stuff like that all day every day on social media, all that killing, all that anger being displayed.”
According to his grandfather, Johnson got terribly concerned by what he considered injustice that he was seeing constantly on television.
McDonald explained, "People see police killing black men and nothing is done about it. What Micah did--in his mind--was about injustice."
According to reports from CNN, friends said Johnson had begun "posting a lot on Facebook about African-American treatment at the hands of white policemen, but nothing that would indicate any strange behavior."
CNN reported that analysis of his computer also showed a recent interest in Afro-centric matters. He had a Black Power poster on his Facebook page and had "liked" pages connected to Elijah Mohammed, founder of the Nation of Islam, The New Black Panther Party and the Black Riders Liberation Party.
McDonald said that despite some material that showed up on his computer, many reports of what his grandson was doing in the weeks before the shooting were false.
"He was not a member of The New Black Panthers; he was not on meth. He had a clean record, never been arrested and had no criminal record of any kind."
Police have found no connection between Johnson and any known terrorist group, according to CNN and other media outlets.
McDonald did say that Micah had become very concerned about the Black Lives Matter movement "because he saw how much injustice was out there and it was bothering him."
Havard McDonald did not alibi for his grandson.
''What he did was wrong," he said. ''We do not support what he did. We are so sorry for those other families. But regardless of what he did, (Micah) was somebody's baby too. He thought he was doing the right thing. He thought he was giving his life for justice."
As a professed Christian, a pastor, and a volunteer missionary to such countries as India, Havard McDonald says that while his grandson's crime has rocked his family, it has not rocked his own faith.
"I refuse to let hate and degradation into my heart, into my spirit. When I lost another grandson in an automobile accident a year and a half ago, God asked me to trust Him. My walk with Him is so close that I could do that then, and I can do that now. When God speaks, I can believe Him."
