[06/06/02]A 21-year-old Vicksburg man was shot in Kings Wednesday night and died as a nurse, to whose yard he fled, attempted to resuscitate him.

“I’m just sorry I couldn’t have saved the child’s life,” said Pat Kinnard, an emergency room nurse for 17 years.

According to reports, the shooting started 75 yards or more from Kinnard’s home and one of two people later arrested actually apologized to her for the fact the principals wound up on her property.

She said the gunman said to her, “I’m sorry Miss Pat, I’ll get you some help.” Then, at the urging of the driver, he got back into the passenger’s side of a vehicle and the two drove away.

The dead man was identified as Dean Johnson, the son of Dean McKay and Linda Blue Johnson. No addresses were available.

Brothers Tyrone Jenkins, 28, and Kevin Jenkins, 32, both of 94 Williams St. in Kings, were arrested Wednesday night and were to make an initial appearance in court this morning, Police Chief Tommy Moffett said. Both were charged with murder.

Kinnard said she was watering flowers about dusk on the Ford Road side of her house when she heard gunfire some distance away.

A cousin of Johnson’s who lives where the shooting started said a sport-utility vehicle headed south on the road stopped about 20 yards north of where Johnson and others were standing. The gunman got out of the vehicle and began firing, the cousin said.

“He was trying to hit anybody there,” the cousin said. “If I hadn’t moved, the bullet would’ve hit me.”

Johnson ran away, with the gunman in pursuit, the cousin said.

Shortly, he emerged in the pasture behind Kinnard’s home, circled around the house and slipped and fell beside a ditch 10 feet from the south staircase to her home. All the while, the gunman was in close pursuit, Kinnard said.

The gunman shot Johnson while he was down on the grass beside her stairs. Then Johnson tried to walk up the short staircase with Kinnard to her house, she said.

“Dean was trying to get to safety,” Kinnard said. “I’d have let him in. I was hollering and shouting, Don’t shoot him, he’s too close to me.'”

Near the top of the staircase both Kinnard and Johnson fell to the grass below, with Johnson landing on top.

Kinnard, an employee of River Region Medical Center, said she immediately began trying to sustain Johnson’s breathing and heartbeat and called 911 from the cordless telephone she had with her.

That’s when the gunman apologized.

Kinnard said Johnson was shot in the left shoulder, abdomen and groin. She said an ambulance did not arrive on the scene for 15 or 20 minutes after her call.

Police didn’t know exactly what started the shooting.

“We have reason to believe that there had been an earlier incident involving these same individuals, and this may have been an extension of that,” Moffett said.

Kings is a neighborhood along North Washington Street about three miles from Downtown Vicksburg. It was annexed in 1990.