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Judy Johnson described her son to The Associated Press as a once-carefree father of two who became introverted after his wife left him seven years ago and took their children with her to Ohio.
Police gave her their business card Thursday afternoon and asked her to have her son call them about a case they wouldn’t discuss with her, said.
Scott J. Johnson, 38, returned to their home in Kingsford, Mich., a few hours later. She gave her son the card, and he said he would take care of it and walked out, she said.
“He seemed calm but looked like he was anxious to leave,” Judy Johnson said tearfully. “He walked out, and that’s the last time I saw my boy.”
She said he was probably “freaked out” over police interest in him.
According to police, Scott Johnson ended up at a bridge about 3 miles away where teens often gathered to swim and dive in the Menominee River. He jumped from bushes and opened fire on about a half-dozen young people relaxing by the bridge, which links Niagara, Wis., and Kingsford, police said. Three teens were killed, and a 20-year-old was injured.
Authorities say Scott Johnson was dressed in camouflage, but his mother said he left the house in a green T-shirt and dark shorts with no weapons.
“Who knows? He probably had the stuff stashed somewhere, I guess,” she said, sighing.
A 24-year-old woman told police Scott Johnson sexually assaulted her Wednesday at the spot where the shooting occurred a day later. She told police that she knew Johnson casually, and that the two had visited the site a month earlier without incident.
Johnson hasn’t been charged with sexual assault. Authorities have said they don’t know whether he has an attorney yet.
Judy Johnson said she didn’t think her son had had a girlfriend since his divorce about seven years ago.
The divorce changed him, she said. His son and daughter were his whole world, Judy Johnson said, and he was distraught when his wife moved to Ohio with them.
“He kept saying, ‘I lost everything; I have nothing,’” his mother said. “He just grew heartsick and started turning inward.”
He had been an outgoing youngster who enjoyed helping people so much that he would mow the lawns of elderly neighbors for free, she said. He always loved the outdoors, especially hunting and fishing.
Two 14-year-old boys said Johnson was a regular at the bridge. He would arrive alone and avoid most people but occasionally chatted with them and a few others, the boys said.
“He was always really nice to us,” said Conrad LaPointe, who lives in Johnson’s neighborhood. “But when girls were down there, he would just stare at them from the bridge.”
Johnson graduated from Kingsford High School in 1989 and joined the Army a few days later. He served at Fort Polk in Louisiana but never went overseas. He was married in 1990 and honorably discharged in 1994.
He worked as a plumber in Shreveport, La., and moved back to his mother’s house when his wife left him in 2001.
Killed were Tiffany Pohlson, 17; Anthony Spigarelli, 18; and Bryan Mort, 19. Twenty-year-old Daniel Louis Gordon was wounded. All were from Michigan. Two people escaped to a nearby house, where the homeowner called police.
Authorities launched a 16-hour manhunt that ended when Johnson came out of the woods Friday morning and tossed down his rifle.
Johnson was being held at the Marinette County jail and could be charged in the deaths as early as Monday. Authorities have not commented on a possible motive for the shooting or said whether it and the alleged sexual assault might be linked.
Signs of Thursday’s hangout session remained at the bridge two days later, including an unopened bag of potato chips and discarded beer and soda cans. The only indication someone had visited afterward were two roses on a rock, one red and one yellow.
Judy Johnson said she was scared as the story developed but is now numb with grief, not just for her family, but also for the victims and their relatives.
As the case develops, “it won’t just be him suffering; I’m hurting, too,” she said.
