Arturo's beating suspect also wanted in Cheetah's shooting

Charlie LeDuff / The Detroit News

Detroit -- Eiland Johnson is not only a suspect in the beating death of a man at a Southfield nightclub, but Detroit police want him in connection with a Detroit strip club shooting 10 days earlier.

Johnson, 38, is one of three men accused of the murder of Robert Alexander in Arturo's on Aug. 9. He was among the subjects in a story in today's Detroit News.

He was allegedly having trouble in Detroit's Cheetah's strip club several days earlier.

According to Sgt. Todd Eby of the Detroit Police Department, Johnson was drinking at Cheetah's on the Strip on Eight Mile on July 30, when he got into an altercation with a stripper.

Eby says Johnson -- dressed in short pants and a tank top -- went to his vehicle and retrieved a 9 MM handgun.

A video surveillance tape shows a man walking back into the club around 2:30 a.m. and indiscriminately firing a number of rounds. Three people were struck. The shooter ran away.

Johnson was identified in a line-up by a number of witnesses and is due to be arraigned in 36th District Court on Nov. 16, officials said.

Johnson is currently being held in Oakland County for the beating death of Alexander at Arturo's jazz club in Southfield. A witness, Anthony Alls, told Southfield police that he saw Johnson and his associates, Darnell Cooley, 33, and Deandre Woolfolk, 20, kill Alexander with bottles and a rope stanchion. The men are reputed members of the Black Mafia Family narcotics gang.

A few weeks after giving his statement, Alls was mowed down in a shower of bullets as he left work at a Detroit barber shop.

Judge Susan M. Moiseev of 46th District Court in Southfield is expected to rule on Nov. 18 on the admissibility of the Alls statement to police.

charlie@detnews.com (313) 222-2071