When 25-year-old Ivory Profit went to the park on a Saturday morning in December 2019, he planned to buy an iPhone from someone he met on the online marketplace app Letgo.
But the person on the other end of that meeting had ulterior motives.
Police said the iPhone was advertised on the app for $450 as part of a plot to lure potential customers to an exchange at designated location.
D’Orsay Demond Johnson, then an 18-year-old, planned to rob Profit when the two of them showed up at the Howell Community Park on Winbourne Avenue, police say. Prosecutors said that, during the robbery, the teen shot Profit in the stomach and killed him.
Johnson, now 21, was sentenced to 40 years in state prison Monday after pleading guilty to charges tied to the killing.
Baton Rouge police found Profit wounded in the late morning of Dec. 7, 2019. The victim was taken to a hospital, where he later died.
Johnson was arrested in January 2020 and an East Baton Rouge Parish grand jury indicted him for second-degree murder and armed robbery five months later.
Prosecutors with the parish District Attorney’s office agreed to reduce the second-degree murder charge, which carried a mandatory life sentence, to manslaughter as part of a plea agreement. Johnson pleaded guilty to manslaughter and armed robbery on Nov. 22.
District Judge Fred Crifasi presided over Monday’s hearing and sentenced Johnson to 40 years on the manslaughter charge and 30 years without the possibility of parole for the armed robbery. He also ordered Johnson to undergo evaluations for substance abuse treatment, educational and vocational programs as well as “moral reconation therapy,” or MRT, a 12-step cognitive behavioral treatment.
Both prison sentences will run concurrently, meaning Johnson will serve them simultaneously, according to Crifasi’s order.
Profit was a Baton Rouge native who attended Scotlandville Magnet High School and worked as a delivery truck driver for Two Men and a Truck, his family members told The Advocate days after his death.
He left behind a daughter who was five months old when he was killed.