Lawsuit filed over woman injured when she jumped out of NC police car going 70 mph
Morgan Johnson rolled down the window of the cop car taking her to jail and flung herself onto the Charlotte highway pavement rushing below.
According to a lawsuit filed by Johnson’s mother, a Pineville Police Department officer failed to secure her daughter and did not slow down when she started to duck out the window. The federal lawsuit filed this week accused the town of Pineville and the unnamed officer of deliberate indifference to safety and gross negligence.
After the July 2022 incident, Pineville police chief Michael Hudgins within months announced it had led to significant changes in how officers transport people they’ve arrested or detained.
The town of Pineville did not respond to a request for comment before publication.
Officers arrested Johnson after she called them to report a domestic disturbance, according to the lawsuit and a Thursday news release from Johnson’s mother’s lawyers. Once police arrived, her boyfriend requested a crisis response team. Johnson suffered from bipolar disorder, he told them.
Police knew this already, according to the lawsuit. Johnson “had a history of mental health incidents and arrests.” When she reportedly elbowed her boyfriend in front of police, they arrested her once more.
But before she found herself behind bars, the 30-year-old shimmied out of handcuffs, rolled down the back window of the Pineville squad car, which was reportedly cruising at 70 mph, and hurled herself onto the interchange between Interstate 485 and Interstate 77.
She rolled forty feet and fractured her skull, according to the lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of North Carolina on Tuesday. The injuries to her brain have left her unable to care for herself.
According to the lawsuit filed by Johnson’s mother, Brenda Yates, the officer driving Johnson, who remains unidentified in court documents, didn’t secure her seat belt, failed to lock the windows and ignored the sounds of her slipping out of her handcuffs.
Hudgins, the police chief, previously said Johnson “was half hanging out of the back passenger window” when the officer noticed what she was doing and began to brake.
Yates’ lawyers, Ben Crump and Bakari Sellers, said in the news release that “the unnamed officer did notice Johnson manually sliding the window down but still did not stop or slow down.” They said he also saw her “climbing out of the window but again failed to either stop or reduce his speed.”
That unnamed officer was never put on leave, the mother alleges. Footage of Johnson’s escape doesn’t exist, according to the lawsuit, because the officer broke his department’s policy when he failed to activate the backseat camera installed in his car.
“Let’s be clear, when Morgan Johnson called 911 that night, she was a woman in a mental health crisis calling for help,” Sellers said in a statement. “Unfortunately, she never found that help. Instead she found failure and incompetence that left her permanently disabled and unable to care for herself.”
This story was originally published May 2, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
