A Tucson man due in court next week on violent domestic violence charges against his girlfriend has been identified as the gunman in an apparent murder-suicide this week on Tucson's north side, authorities say.
About 12:45 p.m. Monday, the bodies of Michael Martinez Duran, 48, and Michelle Ohnesorgen Johnson, 47, were found inside a house in the 2800 block of North Desert Avenue, near North Swan Road and East Glenn Street, Tucson police said in a news release.
Both had been shot.
Initial evidence indicates Duran shot Johnson, then turned the gun on himself, the release said. Court records show prior domestic violence arrests against Duran that occurred in November 2024 and in May.
Johnson reported that Duran waved a firearm around during the most recent altercation. He choked her until she lost consciousness several times, struck her in the face and “asked her if she wanted to die." Duran, she told police, was pointing a gun at her the entire time.
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The incident in November 2024 also involved strangulation, court records show.
Though bonds had been set in both cases, Duran successfully petitioned the court for a release to pretrial services and was freed with a warning to not have un-consented contact with Johnson.
Pima County Attorney Laura Conover’s office filed a motion in the recent case to keep Duran in jail, despite Johnson’s desire to maintain contact with him.
The motion noted that a release to pretrial services would not be sufficient to ensure Johnson’s safety.
“In this case, we argued and secured a bond to keep him in jail, but the defendant returned to court asking for a second chance to be released,” Conover wrote in a news release. “We strenuously objected due to our grave concerns that the defendant's violence was escalating.”
Conover’s office said statistics indicated this the outcome of the case could be lethal.
“When a person has been strangled by their partner, there is an 800% increase in the likelihood of that person being murdered,” Conover said in a statement about the case. She noted that “43-percent of all women who are murdered have been previously strangled by their partner.”
The case remains ongoing.
