A 2019 Killing on South Euclid Avenue Returns to Department F on Thursday

The murder case filed against Telly R. Johnson comes back before a judge in Department F on Thursday morning, more than seven years after Byron Young Nettles was stabbed to death outside the Pasadena building he managed.

The pretrial hearing is scheduled for 8:30 a.m. Thursday, August 6, at the Pasadena Courthouse, 300 East Walnut Street, according to the Superior Court. 

Johnson has pleaded not guilty to murder and to an allegation that he used a knife. He was charged on March 6, 2019, entered his plea a week later, and a judge ordered him to stand trial in July 2020. Bail was set at $2 million after his arrest.

Nettles was 52 and lived in the 100 block of South Euclid Avenue, according to the Pasadena Police Department. He managed the supportive-housing building there, City News Service reported. Euclid Villa stands at 154 South Euclid Avenue, a 14-unit property that Union Station Homeless Services established in 1997 and calls permanent supportive housing for families.

Officers were called to the block at about 9:05 a.m. on Friday, March 1, 2019. They found a man with stab wounds, and Pasadena Fire Department paramedics took him to a hospital in critical condition, the Pasadena Police Department wrote in a news release issued the following day. He underwent surgery. He died at 3:52 p.m. of stab wounds to the chest, the Los Angeles County Department of Medical Examiner determined.

The attacker reportedly fled on foot. Officers set a perimeter and searched block by block with helicopters and police dogs in an area bounded by Green Street and California Boulevard, from Los Robles Avenue to Marengo Avenue. Mayfield Junior School, a Catholic school for kindergarten through eighth grade at 405 South Euclid Avenue, went into lockdown, and neighbors were told to shelter in place until about 2:30 p.m.

“Preliminary investigation suggests the incident was not random in nature,” the Pasadena Police Department wrote in the release. Robbery-homicide detectives took the case. A motive remained under investigation, the department wrote at the time.

At the department’s request, the U.S. Marshal’s Pacific Southwest Regional Fugitive Task Force watched a location in Los Angeles. Johnson, then 41 and a Los Angeles resident, was taken into custody without incident at about 9:26 p.m. in the 1900 block of Cordova Street and was booked for murder at the Pasadena City Jail.

“He was just so helpful to everybody,” Nettles’ wife, T-Shawn Demethris, told KCAL9 after his death.

The case is being prosecuted by the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office. Johnson is presumed innocent unless and until he is proved guilty.

The courthouse is open Monday through Friday from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Department F can be reached at (626) 396-3323, and the courthouse’s main number is (626) 396-3300. Paid parking is available in the structure at the southeast corner of Marengo Avenue and Walnut Street, with the entrance at 240 Ramona Street. Pasadena police in 2019 asked anyone with information about the killing to call (626) 744-6477 and directed anonymous tips to Crime Stoppers at (800) 222-8477 or lacrimestoppers.org.