About the only piece of evidence the prosecution didn’t have in the murder case against 20-year-old Patrick Fluker was an eyewitness testifying that he was seen shooting 29-year-old Tiffany Mendez in the head.FORT WAYNE – A plea agreement downgrades a Fort Wayne man’s murder charge and calls for him to serve 40 years in prison.
David A. Johnson, 37, of the 5900 block of Bunt Drive, was scheduled to stand trial Wednesday. Instead, he entered an unplanned guilty plea to a lesser charge of voluntary manslaughter the day before with Allen County prosecutors.
Johnson is scheduled to appear Sept. 24, when a judge will decide whether to accept the plea, court officials said.
On the evening of March 2, Brandon Portee, 23, was found in the street in the 4000 block of Avondale Drive with a gunshot wound to his head. He was pronounced dead a short time later at Parkview Hospital.
Several witnesses said a group of people had become involved in a fight in the front yard of a home, Portee among them. Johnson arrived in a white Lexus, took a shotgun from a home in the area and shot Portee, then fled in the car, witnesses told police.
Portee’s cousin told The Journal Gazette at the time that Portee had gone to the home to pick up a friend when the fight broke out. Two women inside the house started fighting when one said the other’s makeup looked ugly, and the fight spilled outside, where Portee was shot, the family member said.
Police located Johnson’s car, and Johnson turned himself in the week after the shooting.
Johnson had been arrested seven times in the past 15 years, mostly for misdemeanors, and had been convicted of battery three times, according to Allen County court records.
