By Mindy Ragan Wood
Staff Writer
The case against a former Okarche reserve police officer charged in a road rage incident may be weakened by a witness who misidentified the suspect in court.
Loggan Daniel Johnson, 30, will face a jury trial October 21 after he was charged with feloniously pointing a firearm at a family in Oklahoma City in February 2018.
Brandon Cooper accused Johnson of pointing his gun at them after he allegedly chased he and his girlfriend down. Earlier this year during court proceedings, Cooper’s girlfriend was asked to point to man in the court who pointed the gun but failed to identify him.
Johnson’s attorney Irven Box said she pointed “to my son Tyler.”
Box said his client was offered a plea deal from the Oklahoma County District Attorney’s Office.
“I don’t know why he declined it,” Box said. “The defendant was offered a plea agreement that would have no conviction.”
Cooper claimed he was driving west on NW 23rd Street near Drexel Avenue on Feb. 22 around 9 a.m. He said they had to stop because a black Dodge Dart was stopped in the middle of the street, the report shows.
The Dodge was trying to back into the driveway of a home on NW 23rd. Cooper told the officer that he honked his horn at the Dodge and that’s when the driver rolled down his window and “flipped him off ,” the report reads. His girlfriend rolled down her window and flipped off the driver.
Cooper said he drove around the Dodge and continued west on the street until he stopped with traffic. He claims that the driver caught up to them, pulled up beside them and pointed a “black semi-automatic pistol at him and his family,” according to the report.
When Cooper told the gunman that there were children in the car, the driver sped off west into a nearby neighborhood, a report states.
He called 911 and made a report. The officer returned to the residence where the Dodge was parked the next day.
The officer wrote in his report that he watched an Okarche police SUV back into the driveway, but the driver did not get out for about 10 minutes. The Oklahoma City police officer approached the driver who he learned was a reserve Okarche police officer.
“(He) matched the vague description (Cooper) gave and taking his time to get out of his SUV was suspicious,” the officer wrote in his report. The reserve officer said he could not have been the road rage driver because he works nights and would have been asleep at the time the incident happened. He also said he rarely drives the Dodge and that his girlfriend primarily drives it.”
Mark Sterling, then Okarche Police Chief, contacted Johnson about the accusation and Johnson immediately resigned.
Johnson has previously worked for two other police departments in Pond Creek and Lamont.
