When Eric Johnson learned his friend and another man had shot a woman and beat her baby, the Atlanta teen called Fulton County police to tell them what he knew.
It was the first time investigators had heard Johnson's name in connection with the August 2009 assault of Shanequa "Nikki" Neely and her 10-month-old child, said Bill Atkins, one of Johnson's attorneys in a wrongful arrest suit filed against Chattahoochee Hills.
The City Council voted Tuesday night to pay Johnson, now 21, $600,000 and formally apologized for the way he was treated by the city's nascent police department.
Johnson was arrested 10 days after placing that call and spent the next 100 days behind bars for merely trying to "do the right thing," co-counsel Mawuli Mel Davis told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
"It sends the wrong message. If you go and try to help the police, you may in fact end up becoming the target of their prosecution," Davis said. "This is by far the worst case that I have seen where police flat-out abused their authority."
Johnson, a junior at Paine College in Augusta, told police he drove friend Antoine Wimes and another man, Donavin McCoy, to Neely's home the night of the attack, but said he did not know what they intended to do. Hours after Johnson dropped off the two men, police said, Wimes shot Neely in the face and slammed the infant up against a wall in search of money.
Wines and McCoy were arrested, charged and convicted in the case, Atkins said.
Neither the suspects nor the victim implicated Johnson, who was charged with aggravated assault.
The lawsuit alleged that police "misrepresented material facts," leaving out such details as Johnson's contention he only drove Wimes and McCoy to the victims' house.
To prove their case, Atkins deposed the municipal judge who signed the arrest warrant for Johnson.
"By the end of the deposition, it was clear that if the judge had known what we knew, he would not have signed that arrest warrant," Davis said.
The suit named Chattahoochee Hills Police Chief Damon Jones and detectives James D. Melton and Sydney A. Brown as defendants, along with the city. The chief and the detectives are no longer employed by Chattahoochee Hills, Atkins and Davis said.
"We always felt that since Eric called Fulton County police and didn't feel confortable talking to [Chattahoochee Hills investigators], that this was a 'We'll show you' move," Davis said, adding that Johnson's mother was also threatened by police. Their motive, according to Davis: "Vindictiveness."
"I was scared. I was nervous. I didn't have a clue what would happen," Johnson said in a taped deposition provided to the AJC by his attorneys. "It's hard to find the words to explain the stuff that goes down in jail."
Johnson was released on Dec. 4, 2009 on $55,000 bond. The following May, the Fulton County District Attorney's office dropped charges against him.
Chattahoochee Hills City Attorney Rick Lindsey, Mayor Tom Reed and City Manager Jim Williams could not be reached Wednesday for comment.
Atkins credited Chattahoochee Hills for its apology, which he said was offered up with little resistance.
"This is the first time a municipality has had the decency to step up like this," he said. "I commend them on it."
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