The Army reservist who killed five Dallas police officers had kept an unauthorized grenade in his room on an Afghanistan base in 2014, according to a report by Army officials investigating a sexual harassment complaint against him.
The report released yesterday includes new details about an incident that left Micah Johnson stripped of his weapons and removed from his base in disgrace in May 2014. His military career ended soon afterward. His parents have said he was never the same.
The 25-year-old Dallas man was killed July 8 after targeting police during a rally protesting recent police shootings. Carrying an assault rifle, Johnson took multiple positions as he attacked police and threatened to kill more before a bomb-carrying robot was deployed to kill him, authorities have said.
Johnson, a black man, told authorities during the attack that he wanted to gun down white officers, police have said. The Mississippi-born Johnson was in ROTC in high school and would join the Army Reserve. But his military career ended soon after a female soldier reported four pairs of panties missing while the two were at Camp Shank, a base in eastern Afghanistan known as "Rocket City" because the Taliban targeted it many times.
Soldiers found the missing underwear in a dumpster where Johnson had apparently thrown them after getting caught with them in his room. Later on, a few other soldiers were packing up Johnson's possessions and found the MK-19 grenade in his room, as well as a .50-caliber round and prescription medicine belonging to someone else, the report said.
The Army has blacked out the recommendations of the investigating officer who wrote the report.
Soldiers aren't allowed to have grenades in their barracks, according to several military experts. Johnson's superiors could have recommended punishment for stealing government property or mishandling ammunition, said Geoffrey Corn, a former military judge who teaches at the South Texas College of Law. But they may have chosen to pursue the sexual harassment case since it was so strong, he said.
The presence of the grenade also alarmed Patrick McLain, a Dallas defense lawyer and former military judge who was not involved in Johnson's case.
"If indeed he really had panties that belonged to her without her permission, that kind of pales in comparison to having an explosive device or to having someone else's medication. That's serious," McLain said.
Retired Sgt. Gilbert Fischbach, who was Johnson's squad leader before he deployed and has been highly critical of the military's handling of the case, said the grenade finding "should have been a red flag."
Fischbach said the military dropped both the protective order sought by the woman in her sexual harassment complaint and her request that he be psychologically evaluated.
