Influencer worried about eclipse killed partner, baby: report
The moon eclipses the sun on 8 April 2024 in Fort Worth, Texas. Millions of people have flocked to areas across North America that are in the path of totality in order to experience a total solar eclipse. During the event, the moon will pass in between the sun and the Earth, appearing to block the sun.
Ron Jenkins/Getty Images/AFP
A US astrology influencer worried about the recent solar eclipse stabbed her partner to death, then pushed her two children out of her moving car before fatally slamming the vehicle into a tree, a report said Wednesday.
Danielle Johnson, who peddled weekly "aura cleanses" on her website and offered online zodiac readings, told followers that Monday's total solar eclipse in North America was "the epitome of spiritual warfare."
"Get your protection on and your heart in the right place," she wrote on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, on April 4 under her online pseudonym Danielle Ayoka.
"The world is very obviously changing right now and if you ever needed to pick a side, the time to do right in your life is now."
Early Monday morning, she knifed her Air Force veteran partner dead, before taking off in a Porsche Cayenne with her two daughters, the Los Angeles Times reported.
Hurtling down the major 405 freeway before dawn, Johnson shoved the children — one nine year-old, the other only eight months — out of the moving vehicle.
Only the nine-year-old child survived.
Half an hour later police were called to the scene of a horrific crash on the Pacific Coast Highway in which the luxury vehicle had slammed into a tree at 100 miles (160 kilometers) an hour.
Johnson's body had been so disfigured in the crash that identification was difficult, the Times reported.
Police who went to the family apartment found a trail of bloody footprints and the body of 29-year-old Jaelen Allen Chaney. He had been stabbed in the heart.
The Times cited law enforcement sources as confirming that Johnson and Ayoka were the same person.
While eclipses have long been connected to end-of-times prophecies dating back to pre-history, scientists say there is no basis in fact for the conspiracies.
Monday's spectacular eclipse offered an unparalleled celestial show for tens of millions of people in North America, from Mexico's Pacific coast to Texas, Arkansas, Niagra Falls, New England and eastern Canada.
Onlookers watched in awe as the Moon obscured the Sun, allowing the star's corona to be seen with the naked eye.
Only a partial eclipse was visible in Los Angeles.