By Joel Currier
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
O’FALLON, Mo. — Bullets whizzed by Stacy White’s face as her ex-boyfriend ran past her, out the rear door of the apartment, firing at police and dodging their gunfire.
Maurice Johnson darted down the back steps. Moments later, officers found him dead on the platform below.
Johnson fatally shot himself June 1, ending a shootout with police at an apartment complex in O’Fallon, according to recently released police and autopsy reports that detail a chaotic encounter between officers and a volatile, violent man.
Police say they stopped a dangerous threat that morning by preventing Johnson from attacking his ex-girlfriend. But she believes police risked her life and could have avoided the shooting even though she secretly tipped off Johnson that police were waiting for him.
“They should have not had me in there knowing he had a gun,” said White, 26. “I was in the line of gunfire the whole time.”
She also questions whether Johnson killed himself.
O’Fallon Police Chief William Seibert said White has never approached the department with her concerns but said his officers handled the situation appropriately.
“They didn’t know (Johnson) was as close as he was,” Seibert said. “In my mind, I think they saved her life.”
A stormy relationship
White said she and Johnson, 30, of Warrenton, ended their 10-year relationship in January because he couldn’t find steady work and drank too much. He stayed with relatives but kept in touch with her and their two boys, 1 and 4, and a girl, 9.
While apart, White says Johnson begged her repeatedly to take him back so that he could be with their children. He promised to find a job and cut back his drinking, but White refused. She said Johnson told her several times he would kill himself if he could not be with his family.
Despite this, White refuses to believe Johnson committed suicide.
“He loved his kids,” White said. “I think he was generally a good, kind-hearted man who loved his family. He was just trying to get his family back.”
However, White said, Johnson had physically abused her and had threatened her numerous times in phone calls and messages. Police were looking to arrest him on warrants for stalking and domestic assault against White in violation of a protection order she filed in March. In 2006, he pleaded guilty of domestic assault against White and was sentenced to probation.
Johnson called White’s cell phone more than 100 times over two days before the shooting, according to police reports. He begged her to let him come home, but White said no. One of his voice mails to her was a recording of a gunshot blast and the message, “That’s not a threat, it’s a promise.”
White doesn’t know whether his promise was to shoot her or himself, but she said she wasn’t afraid of him. The morning of the shootout, White said he agreed to turn himself in if he could see his kids one more time. “I wasn’t worried at all that he was going to shoot me.”
The shootout
On the morning of the shootout, Johnson called White’s cell and work numbers several more times asking if he could stay at the apartment because he had no place else to go. She refused and told him she would call him later that day.
O’Fallon police responded to White’s apartment about 9:30 a.m. after receiving a 911 call from one of White’s friends asking officers to check on her. White went home, too, after a neighbor called her to tell her six officers arrived at the apartment complex in the first block of Millcreek Parkway looking for Johnson.
Once inside, police determined Johnson wasn’t there and four officers left. Officers Michael Doerge Sr. and Charles Niel stayed, in case Johnson showed up.
White told police he might have a gun reported stolen from his brother in Warrenton. Johnson then again called White, who warned him police were there waiting for him. Johnson told her to meet him at the back steps of the apartment in two minutes.
Police told White to meet Johnson on the steps and to bring him inside the apartment so they could arrest him. After Johnson and White went inside, police burst from behind bedroom doors and tried to arrest him, but Johnson pulled a .40-caliber semiautomatic weapon from his waistband and fired a shot.
Doerge and Niel returned gunfire but missed, sending bullets into the wall behind Johnson. He fired at the officers as he ran past White, who was standing by the back glass door leading to a deck. Police returned gunfire as Johnson sprinted down the back steps.
“All of a sudden, I just feel, like, fire, just go right past my face,” White said. “The glass shatters. And I’m like ‘Oh my god!’ And I’m screaming.”
A neighbor, Steve Bice, 42, was walking his dog behind the building when he heard shots and saw Johnson sprint down the back steps. Bice said he saw Johnson fire at least three shots toward police. He said the officers had ordered Johnson to drop his gun and raise his arms when he fired his gun toward police. Bice said he didn’t witness Johnson shoot himself but watched as he collapsed on a deck below a flight of steps.
“It happened so fast,” Bice said.
Johnson was shot twice - in the head and left forearm. But police could not find either bullet.
The findings
Dr. Kamal Sabharwal, the pathologist who performed Johnson’s autopsy, said the fatal gunshot wound to Johnson’s head was self-inflicted. He said he reached his conclusion based on police accounts of the incident and evidence of soot and burn marks around the head wound, which indicate the muzzle of Johnson’s gun was in contact with his skin.
White said she hasn’t gone to police because she thinks her concerns would go nowhere.
St. Charles County Prosecutor Jack Banas, whose office reviews all police-involved shootings, said the officers acted properly.
Next month, Doerge and Niel will be awarded medals of valor from the Crusade Against Crime and the St. Louis Police Chiefs’ Association for their actions in the case.
Plaster-filled bullet holes still dot the walls of White’s apartment. They are painful reminders of how much she misses him, despite his troubles and abuse. She said her two youngest children have begun asking questions about how their father died, but she isn’t sure what to tell them. For now, she skips details and tells them he is in heaven.
“God called him home,” White said. “That’s the way I have to look at it. It was his time to go.”
Copyright 2009 St. Louis Post-Dispatch