An astrology influencer worried about the solar eclipse earlier this week, stabbed her boyfriend then pushed her children out of a moving car before she killed herself, police have said.
Danielle Johnson, 34, had amassed an online following of hundreds of thousands of people, and three days before the eclipse, she told her followers: “WAKE UP WAKE UP THE APOCALYPSE IS HERE”, and claimed the celestial event was “the epitome of spiritual warfare”.
On the day of the eclipse on April 8, Johnson stabbed her partner, Jaelen Allen Chaney, a 29-year-old US Air Force veteran, to death at their apartment near Los Angeles.
Police said the pair had had an argument which descended into violence, before detectives found a knife with “biological evidence” at the scene.
Johnson had told her followers: “WAKE UP WAKE UP THE APOCALYPSE IS HERE” days before the eclipse
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In the apartment, authorities found a gruesome scene: a set of bloody footprints, tarot cards, black feathers, and Chaney’s corpse; Johnson had stabbed the 29-year-old through the heart.
Speaking to Los Angeles outlet KABC-TV, a neighbour said: “Their door was wide open, there was blood on the floor leading into their apartment, and then a trail of it in the hallway leading up to the elevator… I saw some blood on the walls.”
Evidence suggested Johnson tried to drag her boyfriend’s body out of the flat before she gave up and hauled him back into the kitchen.
The mother-of-two proceeded to flee the apartment with her daughters – a nine-year-old and an eight-month-old – in her car, with which she rammed a gate to the complex as she left.
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Johnson’s car crashed into a tree on the Pacific Coast Highway at over 100mph
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Just before 4.30am, Johnson pushed her children out of the car as she drove away; though the nine-year-old survived the incident, the infant was killed by a passing vehicle, according to authorities.
Johnson had slowed the car down, opened the passenger door, and told her nine-year-old daughter, holding her eight-month-old sister in her arms, to get out.
The LAPD’s Lt Guy Nolan said: “When the daughter didn’t do that, she then forcibly pushed her out of the vehicle, in the middle of the freeway, while moving.”
Around half an hour later, Johnson’s car crashed into a tree on the Pacific Coast Highway at over 100mph, which investigators believe was a suicide.
Though she was pronounced dead at the scene, the 34-year-old influencer’s body had been so badly disfigured in the crash that identification was difficult, the Los Angeles Times reported.
Lt Nolan added: “The only witness we have for this crime now is the nine-year-old girl. There’s just very little information we have, other than there was a verbal altercation that turned violent and it ended in tragedy.
“You have this poor nine-year-old little girl who has to live with this for the rest of her life.”
Johnson’s surviving daughter has been placed under the care of the LA Department of Children and Family Services.
Source Agencies
