DALLAS -- Micah Xavier Johnson told Army investigators that he had “no friends and not enough money” and that he once punched out a car window in a fit of frustration after a female friend and fellow soldier backed out of seeing a movie with him, newly released military documents show.
The documents were part of an Army investigation into Johnson’s theft of that female soldier’s panties while both were deployed to Afghanistan in May 2014. The Army ultimately concluded that Johnson sexually harassed the soldier.
On July 7, 2016, Johnson killed five Dallas police officers, injured nine others and also injured two civilians when he opened fire at the end of a downtown protest rally. Johnson was killed by police following an hours-long standoff later that night.
The Army report on Johnson’s panty theft was partly released last month. But additional documents just released in that investigation shed new light on Johnson’s character and behavior.
- Read the full report here
Included in Army documents is a portion of a contentious conversation from Facebook Messenger between Johnson and the female soldier. In the undated exchange, Johnson told the female soldier to delete some posts, and then tells her something else, which the Army blacked out. The female warns Johnson to “never threaten me like that again.” Johnson denied threatening her, to which the female soldier said “what did you mean by tying me down and having me face down on my bed?” Rape, she told Johnson, “is never a joke.” She then told Johnson to stop contacting her.
- Read the Facebook conversation here
In her statement to Army investigators, the female soldier said she had Johnson had been friends for five years, but that they had “disagreements” at times.
“One such incident, PFC Johnson had gotten upset over my leaving for college (six hours away) and punched his hand through a car window, severing an artery and having me bring him to the hospital because of blood loss,” she told Army investigators.
Johnson had a different recollection of the incident, which apparently took place before the pair were deployed to Afghanistan. At the time, Johnson lived his mother in Mesquite.
From his Army statement:
“I did punch through a car window in front of [the female soldier] before, a few years back. I was going through a hard rough patch (I was stuck at a dead end minimum wage job that I loathed. I recently got into a car wreck and was forced to use my stepmother's bright red VW Beetle. Causing my father to have to take off work early and get there late to pick her up and drop her off at work. Almost causing him to lose his job. I was forced to borrow his money to get a crappy car that hardly ran. While living with my mother, her and I fought almost every day and I had nowhere else to live, because of no friends and not enough money.) Nothing at all was going my way. We were supposed to go see a movie that night and after the past few days I had I really wanted to get away from all the stress and drama for a little bit. But we were late for the movie and would of missed the first 30 minutes or so. She then decided not to see it at all and go back to her house and just call it a night. I was just frustrated at the events from before and I needed to let out some stress.”
Johnson was in the Army from 2009 to 2015 with the 420th engineering brigade based in Seagoville, Texas. From September 2013 to August 2014, he was deployed to Afghanistan, where he was a carpentry and masonry specialist.
When the female soldier's underwear went missing from a laundry bag at Forward Operating Base Shank in Logar province in Afghanistan on May 1, 2014, Army commanders quickly found it in Johnson’s belongings. Records show that Johnson tried to throw the underwear away, but was caught with it.
“The (first sergeant) told me we needed to separate them as soon as possible,” the Army report said, quoting an unnamed Army official, referring to Johnson and the female soldier. “I asked if for safety reasons we should relieve PFC Johnson of his firearm and any bladed weapons in his possession. The (first sergeant) said that was a good idea so I had (redacted) retrieve all weapons. We locked them in our mail room for security.”
Johnson was then taken to Bagram Airfield on May 3, 2014. Johnson had not had time to pack his belongings, so others were ordered to do it for him. On May 14, 2014, soldiers found a “single M169, 40mm High Explosive Dual Purpose MK19 grenade” and a “plastic baggie of medicine” labeled with someone else’s name in Johnson’s sleeping bag.
Here's the grenade the Army confiscated.
The investigation ultimately concluded that Johnson “was storing an explosive article in a barracks facility where soldiers lived. PFC Johnson did not have any reason to be in possession [of] the explosive device.”
Johnson was released from Army active duty with an "honorable characterization of service" in August 2014, records show. He was a member of the Individual Ready Reserve at the time of his death in July.
