Brett Harman and Kevin McCann were so close people often mistook them for brothers.
When one of the former wrestlers from the Chicago area was in trouble, the other came to his aid, no matter the circumstances.
Timothy and Tony Johnson–brothers and ex-high school wrestlers from peanut and tobacco country near here–held to their own creed of loyalty.
And when the two sets of young men clashed at a football tailgate party Sept. 4, it ended in the shooting deaths of Harman and McCann. And the Johnsons, arrested on first-degree murder charges, could end up facing the death penalty together, prosecutors say.
Born four days apart, Harman and McCann, 23, died after a clash at a tailgate party near the North Carolina State University football stadium, where friends said they were defending each other during a fight with Timothy Wayne Johnson, 22, and Tony Harrell Johnson, 20.
Timothy Johnson had allegedly shown up with a gun after his brother’s aggressive driving caused Harman and McCann to confront him, witnesses said.
As friends and family in Chicago mourned the loss of Harman and McCann, investigators spent the week piecing together how a tailgate party turned deadly.
Those who know the Johnson brothers expressed shock that they had been charged with murder, while Harman and McCann’s friends admired the way they stood up for each other.
“The world’s a lesser place without them,” said Sean Mulkerrin, a friend who was with Harman and McCann when they were shot.
“Everybody loses when these two guys are gone. They would have done nothing but good in this world.”
Harman, a Marine lieutenant based in North Carolina, and McCann, who worked at Mesirow Financial in Chicago, met in 4th grade when both joined the Rosemont Cobras youth wrestling program.
Both were standout wrestlers. After an undefeated senior season at Notre Dame High School in Niles, McCann received a scholarship to the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. Harman was nationally ranked his senior year at Maine South High School in Park Ridge.
“We all said [Harman] would probably end up in politics because of the `Harman Charm,’ as we called it,” said Zora Popovic, Harman’s girlfriend. “But he said in passing that he’d be just as happy to be a wrestling coach for a bunch of little kids.”
As it turned out, Harman joined the military, enrolling at the Naval Academy before joining the Marines last year. Friends say the discipline and camaraderie of military life appealed to Harman. He studied hard, determined to bring the 40 Marines in his platoon home safely.
“He was so motivated about leading Marines into combat, he just couldn’t wait,” said Jim Letchford, who roomed with him at the Marines’ Infantry Officers Course in Quantico, Va.
Like Harman and McCann, the Johnson brothers have been described as bright, talented and inseparable. And like the Chicago friends, the Johnsons longed to make a greater impact in life.
“They were extremely close,” said Raymond Privott, a retired middle school teacher who lives two doors down from the Johnsons in North Carolina. “Every time you saw one of them, you saw the other.”
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The Johnson brothers grew up in Tarboro, a town of 11,000 east of Raleigh. Their father is a machinist, their mother a secretary.
In high school, Timothy Johnson excelled. He took part in activities ranging from soccer to a club for students interested in medicine. In 1998, he briefly attended the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics, an elite residential school for gifted students near Durham, but he returned to Tarboro.
Friends said Timothy and Tony Johnson studied in academically gifted classes in middle school. Both were wrestlers, although Timothy Johnson was more dedicated, said Lorenzo Carmon, a volunteer wrestling coach at Tarboro High School.
“Tim was just one of the guys on the team who worked hard and would do what he was told,” Carmon said.
Tony Johnson, who graduated in 2002, made less of a mark. For a time, he attended a Christian school in Rocky Mount, N.C., but he, too, returned to graduate in Tarboro. Last year he enrolled at Wake Technical Community College in Raleigh, but recently he moved back to his parents’ home, said Ann Johnson, his mother.
She has trouble squaring the murder charges with the sons she knows. On Mother’s Day, Timothy Johnson showed his devotion with a surprise visit.
“He had to go to work at 3 p.m., but he drove over to the church with me and brought me some flowers,” Ann Johnson said, weeping.
But the sons had brushes with the law. Timothy Johnson was arrested in Wake County for trying to buy alcohol on a false driver’s license, for failure to stop in a hit-and-run and stealing over $500 in gift certificates from the Sears store where he worked, court records show.
Tony Johnson was arrested on several misdemeanor charges of possessing drugs and paraphernalia in his home.
After the shootings, investigators searching Timothy Johnson’s apartment and two vehicles the brothers used found drugs, police warrants stated. Among the items seized were a marijuana cigarette butt, a bong, pills, digital scales and plastic bags containing “green vegetable matter” and a “white powdery substance.”
Raleigh police seized a .38-caliber handgun and ammunition from a Chrysler Cirrus that eyewitnesses said the brothers used to flee the scene, the warrants state. Timothy Johnson’s 1996 Chevrolet Blazer also turned up a .40-caliber semiautomatic pistol with a magazine and a .22-caliber rifle with a scope and cartridges.
Another gun that matched the one used in the shooting would turn up elsewhere, at the bottom of a lake.
For Harman and McCann, the tailgate party was an afterthought. It came amid a three-day party of Harman’s friends–a last hurrah before he was shipped out to Iraq early next year.
They chose Raleigh because it was within reach of Camp Lejeune, where Harman was stationed. He and his roommate drove up Friday afternoon; McCann and 10 others flew in from across the country.
The North Carolina State football game is a social center on Saturday afternoons, a place to cook out and party.
“We figured, it’s the only thing going on tomorrow, why not go?” Mulkerrin said.
They arrived at 2:30 p.m. Saturday. Leighann Liverance, a North Carolina State student, said she and her friends were cooking hamburgers and hot dogs when McCann, Harman and their friends came over.
Soon after, the Cirrus, driven by Tony Johnson, sped through the crowd and bumped Liverance in the leg, she said.
“I looked the guy in the face,” Liverance said. “I was like `Slow down!'”
Second Lt. Joseph Clemmey, Harman’s roommate at Camp Lejeune, said the driver backed into a car, then nearly hit a small girl walking with her father.
Some in the crowd, including McCann, banged on the Cirrus, witnesses said. The driver jumped out and started swinging, and McCann and Harman shoved him against the car, witnesses said.
McCann and Harman “were by no means trying to start a fight,” Liverance said. “The guy in the car, he wanted to fight.”
When the driver swung at Clemmey, he threw him to the ground to stop him, the Marine said. He and other witnesses denied early news reports that McCann and Harman pulled the driver from the car.
Furious, the driver got up and sped off, witnesses said.
The Johnson brothers returned later, and the driver got out to yell at people in the crowd, witnesses said. McCann and Harman told him to leave, but the driver broke a beer bottle and started swinging it at McCann.
“I went to the side of the car to see if there was anything I could do to restrain him,” Mulkerrin said. “I just backed off because he seemed to be getting more upset.”
Mulkerrin didn’t see the first shot, he said, but he heard a “pop” and turned around.
“Then I heard another `pop’ and I saw the guy turn the gun on Kevin and shoot him,” Mulkerrin said.
When the gun first fired, McCann went after the shooter, Mulkerrin said. The shooter then shot McCann, Mulkerrin said.
“They were defending each other in both instances and they got shot,” he said. “That’s the way those guys were.”
Investigators with the Wake County sheriff’s office and the district attorney have declined to discuss details or name which brother is the suspected shooter.
Mulkerrin said that as the suspects fled, he ran up to McCann to see if he was alive.
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“I got on the phone and dialed 911 to try and get those guys some help, but there wasn’t a whole … lot anybody could do,” he said. “They were in a bad way.”
McCann died at the scene, Harman at a nearby hospital.
The Johnson brothers allegedly fled in the Cirrus, search warrants stated. Investigators found the car at Carolina Pottery, an outlet store in a town southeast of Raleigh. In addition to the gun, investigators found a white tank top with possible bloodstains.
At some point, the brothers apparently parted ways, arrest warrants suggest, and each allegedly sought the help of friends. Ashley Brown, 18, a student who came from the Johnsons’ hometown, allegedly helped Tony Johnson escape by checking him into a hotel room, an arrest warrant stated.
Timothy Johnson turned to Rachel Louise French, 20, a junior at Meredith College in Raleigh, the arrest warrant stated. She allegedly helped him avoid arrest.
Her lawyer, Robert Nunley, credits her with directing police to bloody clothes discarded by the shooter and to the handgun in the lake.
Back home in Chicago, McCann’s college roommate, Antwan Babakhani logged onto his computer Sunday afternoon and read the news: two friends killed, two brothers arrested. He fell to the floor and sobbed.
“It’s just such a stupid thing to happen,” Babakhani said. “It’s such a shock. … It wasn’t supposed to be like this.”