Influencer worried about eclipse pushed daughters out of moving car and stabbed partner to death
An astrology influencer who was worried about the recent solar eclipse stabbed her partner to death before pushing her children out of a moving car on a freeway and then killing herself, police said on Wednesday.
Danielle Johnson’s body was found inside a car that had slammed into a tree in the Los Angeles area on Monday.
Police believe she stabbed her partner to death at home in Woodland Hills in the early hours of Monday before hurtling down the major 405 freeway before dawn.
Johnson, 34, shoved her children – one aged nine, one aged eight months – out of the moving vehicle onto the busy highway. Only the nine-year-old survived.
Johnson, who peddled weekly “aura cleanses” on her website and described herself as a “divine healer”, told followers on Monday that the impending total solar eclipse in North America was “the epitome of spiritual warfare”.
“Get your protection on and your heart in the right place,” she wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, last week under her online pseudonym Danielle Ayoka.
She told more than 100,000 followers: “The world is very obviously changing right now and if you ever needed to pick a side, the time to do right in your life is now.”
Partner ‘stabbed through the heart’
In the early hours of Monday morning, Johnson fatally stabbed her partner, Jaelen Allen Chaney, at their apartment in the San Fernando Valley area, about 25 miles (40km) north west of downtown Los Angeles.
The couple had an argument that turned violent, and detectives found a knife “with biological evidence” at the scene, authorities said.
Police who went to the family apartment found a trail of bloody footprints and the body of Chaney, a 29-year-old US Air Force veteran. He had been stabbed in the heart.
“Their door was wide open, there was blood on the floor leading into their apartment, and then a trail of it in the hallway leading up to the elevator and I saw some blood on the walls,” one of Johnson’s neighbours told LA’s KABC-TV.
According to the Los Angeles Times, Johnson tried to drag her partner’s bloody body out of the apartment, but gave up and dragged the body back into the apartment kitchen.
After killing Chaney, Johnson then fled in a dark-coloured Porsche Cayenne SUV.
Child, 9, was holding infant sister when she was pushed out the car
Shortly after, at about 4.29am local time (12.29pm UK), police and fire services were called to an emergency on the 405 in Culver City, roughly 10 miles west of LA.
When officials arrived at the scene they found Johnson’s infant daughter with major injuries and her older daughter with moderate injuries.
The infant was pronounced dead at the scene, while the older daughter was taken to hospital.
Johnson slowed the car, opened the passenger door and then told her nine-year-old daughter, who was holding her infant sister in her arms, to get out of the car.
“When the daughter didn’t do that she then forcibly pushed her out of the vehicle, in the middle of the freeway, while moving,” Lt Guy Nolan of LAPD said.
The infant was struck by a passing vehicle, authorities said.
After abandoning her children on the freeway, Johnson sped off at more than 100mph.
Half an hour later, she crashed into a tree in Redondo Beach, on the Pacific Coast Highway. Investigators believe the crash was a suicide.
Johnson’s body had been so disfigured in the crash that identification was difficult, the Los Angeles Times reported.
The surviving child has been placed in the custody of LA’s Department of Children and Family Services.
Police are still investigating a motive for the violent incidents.
“The only witness we have for this crime now is the nine-year-old girl,” Lt Nolan said. “There’s just very little information we have, other than: there was a verbal altercation that turned violent and it ended in tragedy.”
Johnson described herself in her Twitter profile as a “reiki master teacher”.
On her website, she offered “home purifying cleanses” and a daily “grounding” subscription.
Last Friday she posted on Twitter about the upcoming solar eclipse: “WAKE UP WAKE UP THE APOCALYPSE IS HERE. EVERYONE WHO HAS EARS LISTEN. YOUR TIME TO CHOOSE WHAT YOU BELIEVE IS NOW. IF YOU BELIEVE A NEW WORLD IS POSSIBLE FOR THE PEOPLE RT NOW.”