A vigilante Brooklyn auto mechanic was sentenced Tuesday to 14 years behind bars after he fatally ran down a bicycling thief who had just broken into his Jeep.
Korey Johnson, 45, pointed his Jeep Grand Cherokee at 47-year-old Donald Roberts like a rocket, slamming the SUV into the fleeing cyclist and crushing him against a row of parked cars on Sept. 3, 2019.
Johnson saw Roberts breaking into the Jeep on Broadway near Ellery St. in Bushwick, then hopped into the vehicle to pursue Roberts as he biked off, according to prosecutors.
He deliberately sped toward Roberts through oncoming traffic, and intentionally struck him, prosecutors said. Johnson, who was initially charged with murder, pleaded guilty to first-degree manslaughter in Brooklyn Supreme Court last month.
“This defendant’s extreme reaction when he allegedly witnessed a relatively minor, nonviolent crime cost a man his life,” Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez said Tuesday. “Rather than reporting the incident to police, the defendant deliberately chased the victim in his car, striking and killing him, while endangering everyone else on the road.”
In an interview at the Brooklyn House of Detention shortly after his arrest, Johnson said he didn’t plan to kill Roberts, and said the Jeep’s brakes and steering wheel weren’t working, blaming the dead man for possibly damaging the vehicle when he rummaged through it.
“All I wanted to do was catch him, tackle him, not let him get away,” the Ocean Hill resident said at the time. “I just wanted to get close to him.”
He said that Roberts lunged at him with a screwdriver, and slashed a friend he was with before trying to flee.
“I feel terrible,” he added. “Somebody died. It was not my intention to hurt anyone.”
Johnson and his victim both had lengthy rap sheets.
“He was my son and he was a good son,” the victim’s mother, Evelyn Roberts, 69, told the Daily News in 2019. “I know he did things he wasn’t supposed to do, but my son was a human being.”
