Bakari Sellers Spearheads Lawsuit Against Town of Pineville, Police Officer

The mother of a woman severely injured after jumping from a moving Pineville Police Department (PPD) car on I-485 in 2022 has filed a federal lawsuit against the Town of Pineville and the unnamed officer who was driving the vehicle.

Morgan Johnson’s mother, Brenda Yates, is represented by celebrated civil rights attorneys Bakari Sellers and Ben Crump. 

“This was a case that it was necessary to shine light on … the way we treat individuals who are going through mental health crises and whether or not our law enforcement divisions are able to help with that,” Sellers told Queen City Nerve.

Filed on April 29, the lawsuit includes detailed allegations combining accounts from Sellers’ investigation of the case, public records, medical records and Johnson herself, Sellers said.

On July 17, 2022, 27-year-old Morgan Johnson called 911 in relation to a domestic disturbance, the lawsuit states. When PPD officers arrived, Johnson’s boyfriend informed them that she suffered from bipolar disorder and requested a Crisis Intervention Team, a program that dispatches mental health professionals rather than armed officers to intervene in times of mental health crises.

PPD officers were familiar with Johnson due to her history of mental health incidents and arrests, the lawsuit said.

After PPD arrived, Johnson elbowed her boyfriend and was then arrested for assault. The unnamed police officer — referred to as “Defendant Doe” in the lawsuit — placed Johnson in the driver’s-side rear seat of a police cruiser. Johnson’s hands were handcuffed behind her back and Doe did not secure Johnson’s seatbelt, the lawsuit claims.

Around 1:55 a.m., while en route to the Mecklenburg County Detention Center, Johnson started trying to slip out of her handcuffs, creating a clinking sound that was audible on Doe’s body-worn camera as the vehicle approached the I-77 interchange from I-485.

While the police cruiser did possess a rear-seat camera, it was not operational at the time despite departmental policy requiring recording inside the vehicle when carrying a subject. The lawsuit alleges that Doe was aware of Johnson’s attempts to free herself of her handcuffs but did not stop or slow the cruiser to ensure Johnson was secure in the backseat.

After Johnson successfully freed one of her hands from the handcuffs, she began manually sliding the rear, drivers-side window down. The lawsuit pointed out that Doe’s police cruiser had the option to lock rear windows from the driver’s seat but the lock had not been engaged.

Once Johnson was able to slide the window open six inches, she crawled out of the opening, falling from the cruiser as it traveled roughly 70 miles an hour then rolling 30 to 40 feet after hitting the ground. 

The lawsuit claims that, though Doe noticed Johnson manually sliding the window down and crawling out of it, he once again did not stop or slow the cruiser to check on her. Doe was not put on leave following the incident.

Johnson suffered significant injuries as a result of the incident including a fractured skull, subdural hematoma, traumatic subarachnoid hemorrhage and bilateral frontal contusions. 

Johnson is no longer able to care for herself and required the appointment of a guardian as of August 2024.

“This is an amazingly strong young lady who has been through so much and whose life was forever changed and altered, and it was due to just the recklessness [and] negligence of the police department,” Bakari Sellers said. “And when you do work like this in the civil rights arena, your hope is that something like this can never happen again.”

The incident incited multiple policy changes within the PPD after community members criticized PPD’s failure to implement basic safety measures and its response to Johnson’s mental health crisis.

The PPD launched an internal investigation after the incident that resulted in the department reforming several of its policies, including its prisoner transport policy and recording policy.

Read more: Pineville PD Releases Footage of Dennis Bodden Police Killing (2024)

The department updated its vehicles by disabling all rear window and door lock controls and installed bars on all rear windows, according to WCNC.

Queen City Nerve reached out to PPD and the Town of Pineville but had not received a response at the time of this writing. 

“You’ve got to commend anybody who takes steps to try to create safer environments for people they interact with, and it takes courage for the Pineville Police Department to acknowledge their mishaps and take those steps going forward,” Bakari Sellers said. “That doesn’t rectify the harm that was caused to Morgan.”

Johnson’s mother and conservator, Yates, is demanding the courts award compensatory, actual, and consequential damages; attorney’s fees; and punitive damages, among other demands.

“[Johnson’s] damages are exorbitant,” Sellers said. “And so my goal is to make her whole, and my goal is to make sure none of this ever happens again.”