A man who claims he was sexually assaulted by a guy he met on Grindr says he received a photo of his attacker’s dead body a week later.
The sender: the NYPD Special Victims Division detective in charge of his case.
To make a long story short… James Koron Johnson was stabbed to death in his apartment in April 2017. The alleged assailant was David Keegan Riotto Haigh, who Johnson met on Grindr and who is currently on trial. Haigh claims he killed Johnson in self-defense after Johnson raped him.
Now, here’s where it gets a little more complicated.
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The week before his death, Johnson allegedly raped another man he also met on Grindr. The victim is identified in the court documents by the initials R.S.
The same detective was assigned to both the rape case and the murder case.
In sworn testimony ahead of Haigh’s trail, R.S. says he was horrified after the detective “sent me a photo, by mail and text, of James Koron Johnson’s dead body lying on the floor of his apartment.”
Haigh’s lawyers hope to include R.S.’s testimony in the trial to support Haigh’s claim that he killed Johnson in self-defense and to emphasize how the NYPD messed up handling both Johnson’s murder and the earlier assault.
Bklyner reports:
[The defense] argues that the jury in the upcoming trial should be allowed to hear about the earlier complaint against Johnson for sexual assault. It points to similarities between that alleged assault and what Haigh claims happened leading up to Johnson’s death, justifying Haigh’s sense that he stabbed Johnson in self-defense.
Both Haigh and the earlier victim have claimed that Johnson became “aggressive and threatening,” “ordered them to shower after having sex” to wash away evidence and “would not allow either man to leave his apartment” in Ingersoll Houses, according to the motion.
“The similarities are unusual enough to compel the inference that Johnson is the initial aggressor,” the motion reads, “Not because he assaulted another man in the past but because he assaulted another man, barely a week before, in the same place, under strikingly similar circumstances.”
A judge has yet to rule whether the testimony provided by R.S. can be included in the trial.
Related: And the dating app most likely to get you raped, killed, or both is…
surreal33
Why does Queerty go to such lengths to normalize Grindr? Grindr is a dangerous cesspool of drugs, disease, and escalating violent crime. Yet instead of warning your readers to find alternatives to Grindr, Queerty is constantly promoting Grindr.
Umoja
What about this article isn’t a warning?
Juanjo
Surreal is right. How you made that conclusion out of this article is quite surreal.
frankie042172
it is not queerty’s responsibility to warn people about grindr. people can choose to use it or not. i have hooked up from grindr hundreds of times and have never had anybody rape me etc.
if you don’t want to use then don’t but you have no right judging those of us that enjoy the app.
Stefano
@frankie042172 : You are right. I don’t like Grindr and i don’t use it…but i people are free to do what they want.
“i have hooked up from grindr hundreds of times…” Really? I’ve used the app for 4 years and i’ve never met. You must be very handsome !
PollyDarton
The article, so poorly written, was too confusing to understand.