'We Want You All to Wait Until You Hear Our Side': Family of Teen Fatally Shot by DuPage Deputy Speaks Out

Following the shooting death of 17-year-old Trevon Johnson by a DuPage County deputy early Monday morning, the teenager’s family is speaking out.

Alfonzo Singletary, Johnson’s uncle, was the one who identified Johnson’s body after the shooting. According to police, an officer had responded to a domestic violence call around midnight and fired multiple shots after he and Johnson got into an altercation. The officer told investigators he believed Johnson was armed with a knife.

The family’s attorney, Larry Rogers Jr., and others close to Johnson took issue with that point, though, insisting Johnson was unarmed at the time of his death, the Chicago Tribune reported.

“It’s obviously very early, but this seems to me to clearly be an unjustifiable shooting of a 17-year-old young man who was celebrating the holidays at home with his family,” Rogers told the Tribune. He criticized officials for releasing so much information about the shooting without first providing any evidence.

“We haven’t received any of the calls or recordings, but I think what’s important is that the (sheriff’s) department is releasing these statements, and not releasing objective evidence, and that’s exactly what we saw with the Laquan McDonald shooting,” he said. “I don’t think there’ll be any evidence of an altercation that justified in any way, shape or form this young man being shot and killed in his own home over the holidays.”

Singletary, who’s a pastor at the Tabernacle of Hope Church of God in Christ in Chicago, also made a point of emphasizing police officials' urgency to release statements on the shooting, since the public is only hearing one side of the story.

Johnson is survived by his mom and his siblings.

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