Zakah Johnson, 15, photo via KYW News Radio. You know the Inky would never publish his mugshot.
Mama, just killed a man
Put a gun against his head, pulled my trigger, now he’s dead
Mama, life had just begun
But now I’ve gone and thrown it all away
Mama, ooh, didn’t mean to make you cry
If I’m not back again this time tomorrow
Carry on, carry on as if nothing really matters
I will embed the video below the fold in this article; I don’t want it cluttering up the main page.
District Attorney Larry Krasner said, as reported by The Philadelphia Inquirer,
his defense work doesn’t make him soft on crime, but rather someone who can differentiate between redeemable defendants and hardened criminals.
So, I wonder whether Mr Krasner will see this 15-year-old suspect as a “redeemable defendant” or an already “hardened criminal”?
15-year-old arrested for murdering man driving for DoorDash, authorities say
Zakah Johnson, of East Mount Airy, will be tried as an adult for the killing of MD Mahfuzul Haque, according to police.
by Jesse Bunch | Friday, July 24, 2026 | 11:46 AM EDT
A 15-year-old boy was charged with murder and related crimes for fatally shooting a 43-year-old man in Southwest Philadelphia earlier this month, authorities said.
Zakah Johnson, of East Mount Airy, was already in custody for an unrelated crime when police accused him Friday of killing MD Mahfuzul Haque, who investigators said was shot dead on July 7 in the city’s Kingsessing section.
Police responded to a residence on the 100 block of South Ithan Street that evening to find Haque with a gunshot wound to the back of the head.
He was pronounced dead at Penn Presbyterian Medical Center around 9:30 p.m.
On Thursday, police took Johnson into custody for an unrelated investigation. Before he was set to be released, authorities kept him in custody and charged him for Haque’s killing.
So, young Mr Johnson was already known as a bad guy before they connected him to the murder.
Johnson will be tried as an adult, police said. In addition to murder, he was charged with robbery, conspiracy, and a handful of firearms crimes.
Sounds like first degree murder to me, but juvenile offenders, even if convicted as adults, cannot be sentenced to death, nor can they be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, though they can be sentenced to life if future parole is allowable.
So, is a 15-year-old, someone who has allegedly been committing other crimes as well as killing a DoorDash driver, redeemable? Can a 15-year-old who, allegedly, thought it was acceptable to go out and commit other crimes, and was carrying a firearm while doing so, really be reformed? Can someone who thought, who was able to think, that it was acceptable to kill a man simply out working for a living, really capable of learning his lesson and becoming a decent member of society? Yeah, it’s possible, but I would guess that the probabilities of such are low, and if, assuming Mr Johnson is guilty and convicted, he gets out of prison in twenty years or so, what will he have learned during that time other than being a bad guy surrounded by other bad guys?
The video, as promised!