Accused killer of NoLibs waitress weeps in court

Two weeks after Sabina Rose O'Donnell's body was found in an overgrown lot near Northern Liberties last month, 18-year-old Donte Johnson sat down with police detectives and confessed to raping and strangling the 20-year-old woman.

Johnson claimed he saw O'Donnell riding the kind of racing bicycle he wanted, and went after it instinctively. Johnson said he grabbed O'Donnell off the bicycle by her neck, choked her, and hauled her behind the building where she lived at Fourth Street and Girard Avenue. She was unconscious when he raped her, he told police.

Detectives asked how he felt about the murder, according to the statement he gave to police.

"I don't like the whole thing," Johnson said. "I shouldn't have did it. I shouldn't have put my hands on her. All over a bike."

On Wednesday Johnson wept in his first court appearance since his June 15 arrest, his shoulders shaking as he sat before Municipal Court Judge Jimmie Moore. He said little other than to respond to yes-or-no questions, and waived his preliminary hearing. Johnson's arraignment was scheduled for later this month.

During Wednesday's proceedings, Assistant District Attorney Richard Sax introduced two key components of the state's case against Johnson: Johnson's confession, and DNA evidence that he said linked Johnson to the killing.

Investigators found a significant amount of genetic material from Johnson on O'Donnell's body, Sax said. There may be additional DNA evidence on the clothes Johnson wore the night of O'Donnell's death.

Johnson's attorney, Guy Sciolla, declined to comment Wednesday.

Johnson's and O'Donnell's relatives sat in the courtroom, some weeping. Johnson's mother was distraught after the proceedings and was comforted by friends and family in the hallway outside. O'Donnell's mother also cried, wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with a drawing by her daughter.

O'Donnell, an aspiring dancer and model who worked as a waitress at a Northern Liberties restaurant, was killed June 2 on her way home from a night with friends. She left a friend's apartment around 2:30 a.m., using a bicycle borrowed from a friend, and pedaled a few blocks to the apartment she shared with her stepfather at Fourth Street and Girard Avenue.

Johnson, a ninth-grade dropout from the 900 block of North 11th Street, told police he was pedaling around the neighborhood, hoping to steal a bicycle. A surveillance camera caught him as he crossed paths with O'Donnell shortly before 3 a.m., then turned to follow her home. O'Donnell's naked body was found shortly before 10 the next morning, badly beaten and strangled.

In his statement, Johnson told police he grabbed O'Donnell because "I liked her bike. I needed a bike. . . . It was one of them old racing bikes."

Once he approached O'Donnell, things escalated quickly. He put her in a headlock that cut off her air supply, he told police, then dragged her to the lot.

"She tried to scream, but I caught her already so that stopped her," he said in the statement. "She couldn't breathe. When I let her go she fell on her face."

Johnson told police that when O'Donnell fell, she passed out but was still breathing. He raped her, then took off his white undershirt, wiped his face and body with it, and threw it over a fence.

Johnson did not say in his statement whether he knew O'Donnell was dead when he left her, but police have said she was. Johnson took O'Donnell's keys and entered her apartment building. He walked in the open door of a neighbor's apartment and washed his hands in the bathroom, then bolted when the neighbor awoke on her living room couch and saw him.

He fled on his bicycle, he told police, leaving O'Donnell's. At home, he stashed his pants in a laundry bag.

"I didn't want to tell nobody about this," he told detectives.

Johnson was arrested June 15, after police released surveillance videos, and someone called with a tip.

Johnson did not explain why O'Donnell's bra was found knotted around her neck, saying that must have happened when he took her clothes off. He also said that he never punched O'Donnell and that she was injured when she fell on her face.

The medical examiner's report tells a different story. O'Donnell was found with bruises around one eye and blood on her mouth and nose. She had cuts, scrapes and bruises on her face, head, legs and arms. The bra was wrapped around her neck twice and tied so tightly that the underwires dug into her skin.

After court, Sax acknowledged that in the police statement, Johnson tried to downplay how badly he had beaten O'Donnell.

"I think (Johnson) is still in some sort of state of denial as to the extent of what he did to her," Sax said. "He was clearly out of control."