Mother who pushed kids from moving car, killed partner was astrology influencer disturbed by eclipse
Breaking News,For L.A. Times Subscribers
Noah Goldberg Richard Winton Hannah Fry April 10, 2024
Danielle Johnson was worried about the eclipse.
The astrology influencer and “divine healer” who went by the name Danielle Ayoka online called the upcoming astronomical event “the epitome
of
spiritual warfare” and told people they needed to “pick a side,” in posts on X on April 4.
Less than three days later, in the early morning before the partial solar eclipse, Johnson left a trail of tragedy in her wake: her partner stabbed to death in the kitchen of the family apartment in Woodland Hills, her 8-month
–
old baby dead after being pushed from Johnson’s moving Porsche Cayenne on the 405, and Johnson herself dead after crashing her car on Pacific Coast Highway in Redondo Beach.
https://x.com/MysticxLipstick/status/1776313948440346923
Found by investigators laying about the Woodland Hills apartment? Tarot cards and black feathers.
Law enforcement sources confirmed to The Times on Wednesday that Ayoka who was active online as an R&B recording artist as well as an astrologer offering self-help and healing sessions for a fee was Johnson, the suspect in the two deaths.
The LAPD has said little publicly about the motive in the deaths and stress the investigation is ongoing. Lt. Guy Golan, homicide supervisor for the LAPD Valley Bureau, said Johnson and her partner, 29-year-old Jaelen Allen Chaney, had no documented history of domestic violence or calls to the
Los Angeles Police DepartmentLAPD
. There were no prior indicators of domestic strife, Golan said.
With no clear motive, investigators believe that the eclipse may have been
a
factor in the killings because of some of the things Johnson wrote just days before, according to sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.
Under the Ayoka moniker, Johnson issued a torrent of anti
s-S
emitic screeds, conspiracy theories and alarmist warnings on April 4 and 5. These included a repost of a debunked apocryphal speech attributed to Ben Franklin about how Jewish people “depreciated” societies wherever they settled, a video about Jews promoting pedophilia in the entertainment industry, and unproven theories about the origin of COVID-19.
Eclipses have become fr
a
ught with conspiracies of impending doom. Social media posts, including one on Reddit that expressed concern over an impending “massive human sacrifice” during the eclipse, have gained attention despite
a
lack of credible evidence.
In 2017, NASA published a webpage dedicated to debunking various myths surrounding that year’s eclipse. One was that eclipses are prophesies of major life changes or impending events.
“This is a common interpretation found in astrological forecasts, which are themselves based upon coincidences and non-scientific beliefs in how celestial events control human behavior,” according to NASA.
NASA counters that it’s only human psychology that “connects eclipses with future events in your life.”
Despite her penchant for offensive posts, Johnson was popular online, with more than 100,000 followers on X who liked her increasingly worrying messages. Years ago she became a darling of the media, with numerous sites
such aslike
Refinery 29 and The Fader posting glowing reviews of the “clairvoyant” Johnson’s skills at giving followers “dead on descriptions of each zodiac sign and [guiding] them to wellness through detailed moon rituals.” She would often make posts about specific Zodiac signs and how they were being affected at the time by astrological movements.
Refinery 29 said Johnson had “a brilliant gift for calling out the nonsense of any sun sign in need of real truths.”
According to her own website, Johnson’s own near-death experience at age 3 led her into “Shamanism.”
“Coming from a rich lineage of Indigenous Shaman and Medicine Women, Danielles spiritual gifts began to blossom. Danielle began her tutelage with her personal healer in 2011, after beginning her own healing journey,” her website reads.
She offered weekly aura cleanses for $2.99 ($1.99 for members of her site) as well as a healing series that was $150 per month for five months, a price that drew some criticism online.
“This series will be LIFE CHANGING for anyone who has struggled with confidence, second guessing themselves and not feeling ‘good enough,'” she wrote on her site.
Her neighbors recognized Johnson’s kitchen in candlelight ceremonies she would host for her followers.
As Ayoka, Johnson also recorded and released songs via online streaming services, and she had an Instagram account for her music as “ayokamystic.”
Investigators offered this account of what happened the morning of the killings:
Johnson stabbed Chaney in the heart in the early hours of Monday morning as he was on the couch. The evidence suggests that she attempted to drag his bloody body out of the upscale apartment in the Woodland Hills Montecito Apartments complex, but at some point abandoned the effort and dragged his body back into the apartment’s kitchen.
The effort left bloody footprints in the corridor outside, and she was spotted with a noticeable limp in the aftermath. She then fled the apartment complex with her two daughters one of them 9 years old, the other 8 months ramming a gate with her car on the way out.
Shortly before 4:30 a.m., she shoved her older daughter out of the car with the infant in the girl’s arms as her vehicle neared the Sepulveda Boulevard/Howard Hughes Parkway exit. The older child survived the fall and escaped traffic, but the infant was killed.
Roughly half an hour later, police in Redondo Beach responded to reports that a black Porsche Cayenne crashed into a tree while driving more than 100 mph on Pacific Coast Highway near Vincent Street. The driver, who was pronounced dead at the scene, suffered massive injuries that made her identification difficult.
Two hours later, police arrived at Johnson’s apartment after a neighbor report
eding
finding Chaney stabbed to death.
A law enforcement source told The Times that Chaney and Johnson lived together for more than three years but were not married. Chaney served in the Air Force as recently as
in
2020, according to the source.
National Archives and Records Administration photographs indicate that Chaney served as an armament technician in the 31st Munitions Squadron and was stationed in Italy for a period during his service.
