Wichita man named suspect in deadly Onyx Club shooting has been arrested
A 33-year-old Wichita man who was being sought in the Sunday deadly shooting at Onyx Club has been arrested.
Terrence Jamar Johnson was arrested without incident, Wichita Police spokesperson Kristopher Gupilan said Tuesday afternoon. Gupilan didn’t know where he was arrested but had just been notified of the arrest by the homicide unit.
Johnson had not been booked into Sedgwick County Jail as of 3:10 p.m.
“Typically, identification of suspects is not made by WPD until formal charges have been filed,” Gupilan said in a news release. “In this case, an exception was made due to the violent nature of the crime, and the potential on-going threat to the community.”
Officers patrolling the business in east Wichita heard gunshots at 12:28 a.m. Sunday. They found 23-year-old Jaylon Pete in the parking lot with multiple gunshots. He later died at the hospital. Two other men were injured by gunfire. One of them was taken to the hospital in a private vehicle and the other by EMS, according to a police media report.
About 10 minutes after the shooting, a woman reported a man “pointing a black handgun at her while demanding a cell phone that was found in the parking lot ... during the shooting at the Onyx Club,” a police media report says.
Police said Johnson was arrested less than 30 minutes later in a separate domestic violence incident in the 1700 block of North Pinecrest. He was released before they were able to identify him as a suspect in the shooting.
Johnson had been kicked out of the club after a disturbance, police said; he went to get a handgun and tried to go back inside, but was not allowed back in.
Asked if the verbal altercation inside the club and the subsequent shooting outside were two separate incidents, chief Joseph Sullivan on Monday said “We don’t believe so, but that’s still a matter of investigation.”
Johnson is on probation, according to the Kansas Department of Corrections. He was last released from prison in October 2022, KDOC records show.
He has six convictions in Sedgwick County dating back to 2010. Those include aggravated robbery, criminal damage to property and two counts each of DUI and criminal possession of a firearm by a felon.
He was convicted of those last four charges in 2021 for two separate incidents the year before. He has 21 disciplinary reports from his time in prison.
Contributing: Michael Stavola with The Eagle
This story was originally published October 31, 2023 at 3:07 PM.