BELLEVILLE, Ill. – A man awaiting trial for allegedly killing three people in a Belleville salon has died of COVID-19.
The St. Clair County Coroner tells the Belleville News-Democrat 55-year-old Samuel Johnson died of complications of pneumonia and COVID-19 at Memorial Hospital in Belleville late Friday night.
Johnson was charged in 2016 with first-degree murder in the March 2005 stabbing deaths of hairdresser Michael Cooney and two of his customers: 79-year-old Doris Fischer and 82-year-old Dorothy Bone. The two women were sisters.
Johnson had been serving a seven-year term in a Missouri prison on gun, drug, and other charges. He was extradited to St. Clair County in March 2017.
In August 2018, Johnson stabbed a fellow detainee at the county jail using a piece of metal. The detainee eventually recovered from that attack.
