Teen charged with manslaughter in friend’s fatal shooting

A 19-year-old man was charged with manslaughter for allegedly shooting his friend to death while he was playing with a pistol in the bedroom of a West Englewood apartment last fall.

Darvell Bohannon was arrested Tuesday in Harvey for the Oct. 20 shooting of 20-year-old Jawuan Maxey.

Bohannon was playing with a chrome-plated Ruger .380 pistol with Maxey and another friend, waving and pointing the gun at his pals until they told him stop, Assistant Cook County State’s Attorney James Murphy said Wednesday. One of the boys went to the bathroom, and heard a gunshot as he was stepping out, Murphy said.

Chicago police

Maxey ran out of the bedroom, clutching his neck as he ran out of the apartment building, trailed by Bohannon and his friend, Murphy said. Maxey collapsed in an alley adjacent to the building, in the 6600 block of South Bishop Avenue, and the friend called to a man in the alley to call 911. The friend and Bohannon left before Chicago police arrived.

When officers arrived, they found Maxey lying in the alley a few hundred feet from the apartment building. Maxey was taken to University of Chicago Hospital where he was pronounced dead.

Officers followed a trail of blood to the apartment, and found the Ruger on the floor, next to Bohannon’s bed, and a cartridge casing on the mattress, Murphy said.

The friend who had been in the bedroom with Bohannon and Maxey walked to a nearby park and found Bohannon sitting on a bench. Bohannon allegedly said he had made “a mistake.”

Bohannon later admitted to police that “he pointed the gun at [Maxey] and didn’t really try to pull the trigger, but the gun went off,” Murphy said.

Judge Mary C. Marubio ordered Bohannon, who has no prior criminal history, held in lieu of $10,000 bail.