John Coffie Jr., a 76-year-old male from Detroit, Michigan, was caught in a burst of violence that unfolded late in the morning on August 6, 2022, inside a house on Saratoga Street near Gratiot Avenue on the city’s east side. Police were sent to the home after reports of shots fired, and what they found was chaos—one victim already outside, others still inside, all suffering from gunshot wounds.
Medics rushed the survivors to the hospital, but Coffie’s injuries were severe, and he later died on August 17, 2022.
Investigators and prosecutors later described the location as a suspected drug house, a place where people drifted in and out and where desperation could spill over into danger without warning. According to courtroom testimony from survivors, the gunman entered and quickly turned the room into a robbery scene, barking demands for valuables and ordering people down. Witnesses said the attacker took crack cocaine and, even as the moment might have seemed like it was ending, began firing—shots ripping through close quarters, leaving little space to run and no time to hide. Two women survived with serious wounds, but three people were ultimately killed, including Coffie.
For a long time, the case lingered without a public arrest, the kind of investigation that depends on piecing together fragments—statements, forensic work, and whatever evidence could survive a scene where fear and silence often follow. Nearly two years after the shooting, authorities announced charges against Jony Saad Alatto of Macomb County, accusing him of entering the home, shooting multiple people, and robbing the residence before fleeing. Prosecutors filed a sweeping set of counts that included felony murder, assault with intent to murder, armed robbery, felon-in-possession, and multiple felony-firearm charges, and he was remanded to jail as the case moved into the court system.
As the proceedings advanced, survivors came forward in court and described what they saw and heard that day—how the robbery began, how quickly it turned into gunfire, and how the victims fell around them. The case was bound over for trial, and the testimony painted a scene of terror measured in seconds: a command to give up everything, the sense that the gunman already had what he came for, and then the sudden decision to shoot anyway, leaving the living to play dead and the wounded to crawl for help.
In the end, the case did not reach a full trial. Alatto later pleaded guilty to three counts of second-degree murder, and many of the original charges were dismissed as part of the plea resolution. On April 21, 2025, he was sentenced to a minimum of 30 years in prison, with a range reported as 30 to 60 years, for his role in the shooting that took Coffie’s life.
