Family shocked by shotgun attack and suicide

THE FINAL MOMENTS of Marques Johnson's life felt like an unexpected plot twist to his family - a sad and confusing ending to an otherwise normal story of a young, hardworking dad they say had never been in trouble before.

So the family all sat together in the living room of their home in Pennsauken, N.J., rewinding his life, trying to figure out what they missed or what they could have done to prevent him from shooting his ex-girlfriend and her father with a shotgun Saturday morning before using the gun to take his own life outside Cooper University Hospital.

"If we would have known what was going on with him, we would have done something," Clifton Johnson, 53, said of his stepson. "We would have tried to stop it."

Camden County police said Marques Johnson's ex contacted her father on Saturday, shortly after 3 a.m., to ask for a ride after discovering her car tires had been flattened. After her father picked her up, police said, Johnson pulled up along the passenger side of the vehicle near Baird Boulevard and Marlton Pike and fired a shotgun at his ex and her father.

Johnson's ex, Lahonda Davis, remained at Cooper University Hospital in critical condition last night with head injuries. Her father, whose name was not released, was struck in the leg and was not hospitalized last night. He declined to comment when reached by phone.

Neighbors on Davis' Pennsauken street, just a few blocks from the Johnson home, were surprised by the news.

"They're good people over there," said neighbor Robert Cunningham.

Police said Johnson fled into south Camden as Davis' father drove his daughter, who'd been shot in the head, to Cooper. A Camden County police officer saw Johnson's vehicle speed through a red light and chased the car to Cooper.

Johnson used the shotgun to kill himself in the parking lot as officers approached his car, police said.

At Johnson's home, the facts of the shooting didn't fit with the person they knew.

"I don't know where that shotgun came from. He didn't even own shotguns," Clifton Johnson said.

The family said Marques Johnson worked at KFC and Burlington Coat Factory and cared for his 4-year-old son, also named Marques. He had just bought a house in nearby Woodlynne and hoped to move in there with Davis, whom the family described as his on-and-off-again ex-girlfriend.

"He's not a troubled child," his stepfather said.

On Facebook, however, Marques Johnson had been making his troubles public in recent weeks, and a photo posted in November shows him pointing a double-barrel shotgun at a camera. His final post on Friday night, just a few hours before the shooting, was ominous.

"If u knew u had the power 2 save lives would u do it???" Johnson wrote.

On New Year's Day, Johnson wrote that he "wished tomorrow would never come."

The vast majority of Johnson's Facebook photos, however, are of him holding his son or posing with Davis. They appeared to be on friendly terms in early December.

Police did not say whether Johnson had any prior domestic-violence issues.

Johnson's family said they were barred from entering Cooper on Saturday after learning something had happened, and they all stood outside in the cold, not knowing that Marques was dead. They would have tried to console Davis' family, they said, if police had let them in.

"She was a good girl, a good mother," said Johnson's mother, Gina Johnson. "We hope she pulls through."