Grisly L.A. murder-suicide that left infant dead reportedly linked to eclipse

The 34-year-old woman who police say was responsible for the gruesome murder-suicide Monday that spanned three different crime scenes, including fatally throwing her infant daughter onto the freeway from a moving SUV, may have been showing signs of a manic frenzy related to the impending solar eclipse.

An astrology influencer on X, formerly Twitter, Danielle Cherakiyah Johnson, referred to the coming eclipse as “the epitome of spiritual warfare” just days before the celestial event.

In the hours leading up to the grisly violence, Johnson, who went by the moniker “Ayoka” with the handle of @MysticxLipstick on X, posted, “ALERT: THIS IS THE FINAL WARNING. TURN NOTIFICATIONS ON. DO NOT LOOK AT THE ECLIPSE. SOMETHING BIG IS COMING,” to her 104,300 followers.

The bizarre and ghastly sequence of events leading up to the April 8 murder-suicide began at the upscale Montecito Apartments on Variel Avenue in Woodland Hills at about 3:30 a.m. when, according to police, neighbors heard an argument between a man and a woman.

Later that morning, a neighbor told KTLA that when she stepped out of her family’s apartment, she saw blood everywhere. Her father called 911 and found Jaelen Chaney, 29, dead from multiple stab wounds inside the apartment.

According to investigators, Chaney and Johnson lived in the apartment with Johnson’s two children, aged eight months and 9 years old, and were involved in a verbal altercation that led to the fatal stabbing.

“Johnson then fled the scene with her two children in a dark-colored Porsche SUV,” LAPD said in an update Tuesday afternoon.

The 34-year-old mother of two crashed her SUV through the parking garage security gate at the apartment complex as she fled, news video showed.

At about 4:30 a.m., still hours before Chaney’s body was discovered, the California Highway Patrol responded to the northbound 405 Freeway in Culver City, where they found the infant girl dead on the roadway and the 9-year-old girl suffering from minor injuries.

“The dark-colored SUV was observed driving on the 405 Freeway when the two children were expelled from the vehicle while it was moving,” police said.

Then at about 5 a.m., investigators say Johnson died when her SUV slammed into a tree on Pacific Coast Highway at Vincent Street in Redondo Beach, going more than 100 miles per hour.

Forensic Psychiatrist Dr. Carole Lieberman told KTLA’s Sandra Mitchell that it’s possible Johnson, who could have been suffering from bipolar disorder or post-partum depression and been in a manic frenzy, was seeing things and hearing voices.

“As the eclipse was coming closer, this could have brought those problems to a head, so people could have seen her not making sense, making poor decisions, doing dangerous things,” she added.

Three days before the multi-city, murder-suicide rampage, Johnson posted to X, “WAKE UP WAKE UP THE APOCALYPSE IS HERE. EVERYONE WHO HAS EARS LISTEN. YOUR TIME TO CHOOSE WHAT YOU BELIEVE IS NOW.”

“What you would think of first,” Dr. Lieberman said, “is that this woman thought that the end times were coming with the eclipse, so she wanted to protect her family from what horrors would come. So, she killed them. However, it was so brutal. That really doesn’t go along with the idea of her wanting to protect them.”

LAPD Lt. Guy Golan, head of the homicide unit investigating the case, told the Associated Press that police are not considering the eclipse as a contributing factor to the tragic killings.

“We’ve taken all the facts we can, but without being able to interview her and without having something more tangible than a post on X, I don’t know how much weight you can give to somebody [saying] there’s an apocalypse and attribute it to one of the most horrific murders we’ve had in L.A.,” he told the outlet.

VIDEO: SUV flips into oncoming traffic during police pursuit in Southern California

The homicide detective also pointed out that there were others who wrote online about eclipse-related concerns, fears of an apocalypse and worries based on religion and spirituality who did not commit murder-suicide.

“How many people wrote about it,” he told the AP, “and didn’t go out and murder somebody?”

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