A father's attempt to stand up for his daughter ends in his death and charges against a longtime family friend

Chicago Tribune

2 days ago

Latisha McMillen stood in the doorway of the crowded closet she shared with her husband and put her face into a folded white t-shirt. She took a deep breath into the fabric, then sighed and put it back on a stack of shoeboxes. She kicked another, empty box.
'These had the shoes he died in,' she said that day. 'I'm waiting for (the morgue) to give them back.'
Eric McMillen's black and grey sneakers with orange accents and leopard print laces never did get returned. Latisha McMillen couldn't stand to look at her own matching pair, which sat untouched in their closet.
But getting dressed Monday morning, Latisha felt the need to wear them to court, where her husband's alleged killer — a longtime friend of the family who had been dating their youngest daughter — was set to come before a judge for the first time.
Eric McMillen's phone had rung a little before 7 a.m. April 30 — his daughter was in a fight with that man and needed McMillen to pick her up. Latisha, 50, said he'd listened and done what any father might do. He got up, changed out of the white t-shirt and got in the car.
Prosecutors said Flomont Johnson and McMillen's children had all known each other for most of their lives.
Johnson shared high school classes with them, the family said. He and the family's youngest daughter had started dating about a year earlier, and he had been part of their Christmas celebration last year, they said. They had pictures of everyone in matching pajamas.
McMillen and his son had driven to Johnson's house in Roseland after the dispute, where prosecutors said he spoke briefly to Johnson outside. McMillen's daughter and son were already in the car when he asked to speak to Johnson's mother.
At that point, prosecutors alleged that Johnson went back inside and returned with the gun Latisha McMillen said her husband had purchased for their daughter and made sure she was licensed to carry, as well as a second, larger weapon. Johnson allegedly shot McMillen three times as his mother ran down the steps to stop him, prosecutors said. The 52-year-old was pronounced dead shortly afterward at Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn.
Marquitta Willis, McMillen's oldest daughter, was getting her kids ready for school when she got a brief phone call from her mother.
''They said he's gone,'' said Willis, 34, of that short call. 'Then she hung up.'
Now, McMillen's family is staring down life without his romantic advice, terrible dancing and cooking skills. They don't know who will look after the massive fishtank in their South Chicago kitchen. And they were stunned that someone who had such a long history with their family could be the suspect in his death.
Prosecutors said Johnson, 28, fled after the shooting to south suburban Markham and then to Gary, Ind. before turning off his phone. Authorities issued a warrant for his arrest in June, records show, and prosecutors said he was ultimately apprehended in Mississippi.
Latisha McMillen put her face in her hands as an assistant state's attorney began to talk through the case Monday afternoon. She leaned on a cousin sitting beside her in the courtroom all through the recitation of the allegations and Johnson's past weapons convictions, public defenders' argument that he had feared for his own safety during the confrontation and Judge John Hock's declaration that Johnson was 'clearly a danger to anybody you might have contact with.' Hock ordered Johnson held pending trial, with a coming court date of Sept. 5.
Later, outside the Leighton Criminal Courthouse, Latisha McMillen said she hadn't expected to hear the outlines of Eric's homicide; she hadn't wanted to know.
'I haven't learned to live with it yet,' she said. 'I'm still trying to understand — why my husband?'
She'd been angry since he was killed, but she said she felt bad for Johnson that day in court too. If convicted, he could spend the rest of his life in prison.
'You (allegedly) killed someone, now you're gonna lose your life,' she said. 'You literally made somebody else's life more important than yours.'
The last time Erica McMillen — another of the McMillen daughters — talked to her dad, she'd been making plans for her 5-year-old's birthday the next month. Her daughter had requested a ball pit at her party, she said, and Eric McMillen had already set about finding a way to make it happen.
Erica, 31, said she often consulted her parents for advice navigating marriage and raising children. Her dad would advise hearing a partner out and would lay out 'the rights and wrongs' of a situation, but would assure his kids that he was on their side as a rule.
Her parents had met through family and were together for 32 years, she said.
Latisha described herself as a person who could burn a pan of eggs, so she cleaned their family's South Chicago house, while Eric did the cooking and handled the laundry. They ran errands together, coordinated their outfits down to the shoes and talked on the phone to their kids together — though their children said that some of this was due to Eric being a champion eavesdropper on speakerphone conversations.
The last of the couple's seven children had moved out earlier this spring. They'd been thrilled to be empty nesters. At the same time, Latisha said Eric was clear with their kids: 'If anything happens, come on back.'
The night before her husband's death, they had been debating whether to drive or fly to South Carolina for an anniversary trip this September. They'd been worried about a spate of plane crashes earlier this year, though Latisha said she'd been reassured by the fact that 'if anything happened, we'd be together.'
She had asked her husband, 'what would I do without you?'
He looked back at her, she said, and replied, 'Nothing. Because I'm not going nowhere.'