JP man with violent record admits he fatally shot teen in the South End

Johnnie Bonnie, 23, pleaded guilty yesterday to voluntary manslaughter just as his trial for killing Evens Archer, 17, outside a South End party in 2014 was about to begin, the Suffolk County District Attorney's office reports.

The sentence means Bonnie could face up to 20 years in prison at his sentencing today. Whatever his sentence, he will not start it until after he finishes the 5-to-7 year sentence he got last year after he was convicted of illegal gun possession following gunfire outside the Ashmont T stop roughly three months after he killed Archer.

At the time of the gun arrest, Bonnie was out on bail for a May, 2014, incident involving a stolen Randolph school van that ended with him and seven other people allegedly running through Roslindale Square before being captured.

And at the time of that arrest, he was on probation for a 2011 stabbing on Tremont Street along the Common, after finishing up a 2 1/2-year jail sentence for his role in the attack.

According to the DA's office:

Assistant District Attorney Amy Galatis of the DA's Homicide Unit would have introduced evidence and testimony to prove that Archer and Bonnie had attended the same party on Castle Court in Boston's South End on the night of June 28 into the morning of June 29.

Galatis would have sought to prove that Bonnie fired a .22 caliber semiautomatic handgun, hitting Archer once in the head, at about 1:50 am before running away down East Berkeley Street and onto Shawmut Avenue.

Video evidence from a nearby camera did not capture the shooting or reveal the gunman's identity, but it did show the assailant fleeing the scene and crouching near a sewer grate. When investigators searched the drain below, they recovered a firearm that was a ballistic match to the projectile that killed Archer.

Archer died after several weeks in the hospital.