A man suspected in a May 29 shooting has been charged with illegally possessing a machine gun after Brooklyn Park police recovered a handgun outfitted with a “switch” following a pursuit earlier this month — identical to the type of gun he allegedly had on him while arrested for selling drugs more than a year earlier.
Federal charges: Shooting suspect caught in Brooklyn Park with similar switch-enabled gun he had in 2023 drug arrest
According to charges, Raquan Rahjai Johnson allegedly also possessed a Glock with a gold switch when he was arrested for selling drugs as a juvenile in January 2023.
The Minnesota Star Tribune
June 22, 2024 at 11:34PM
According to federal charges unsealed on Thursday, a Brooklyn Park police officer working a security detail at the Oro Lounge on June 8 spotted Raquan Rahjai Johnson, 19, of St. Paul, and another man also suspected in a shooting of man that involved “what appears to have been automatic gunfire.”
That officer notified other on-duty Brooklyn Park police officers, who later tried to stop a Chevrolet Malibu that Johnson and others were in as they drove away from the club. The Malibu’s driver sped up and began to flee before officers used a “precision immobilization technique maneuver,” according to the criminal complaint, to stop the car before it could reach dangerous speeds.
The other shooting suspect, identified only by his initials in the complaint, led police on a brief foot chase. A police canine found a firearm outfitted with a machine gun conversion device, also called a “switch,” that enables a gun to be fired fully automatic with a single trigger pull.
Police arrested all of the vehicle’s six occupants, but Johnson is the only one to be charged by federal prosecutors as of Friday. During their arrests, officers recovered five firearms between the foot chase and in and around the Malibu: A Glock model 23 .40 caliber equipped with a gold switch, a Sig Sauer .40 caliber pistol, a Smith & Wesson .380 caliber pistol, a Glock model 19 9mm pistol that had previously been reported stolen, and the Glock model 20 10mm pistol equipped with a switch that was found on the other suspect’s “flight path.”
Agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives (ATF) later found a video posted on social media that showed Johnson flashing a Glock pistol with a gold switch attached. According to the charges, the video appeared to have been taken in the men’s room of the Oro Lounge just before his arrest.
The ATF agent whose affidavit was used to bring Johnson’s federal gun charge wrote in his complaint that Johnson also had a Glock model 23 firearm with a gold switch when Hennepin County Sheriff’s deputies arrested him in January 2023 for selling controlled substances. Johnson received a juvenile conviction for the offense.
A spokesperson for the Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office confirmed on Saturday that the office’s crime lab still had in its possession the handgun found on Johnson at the time of the January 2023 arrest.
Johnson made a brief first appearance in federal court in St. Paul on Thursday, during which a judge ordered him to remain detained and set a detention hearing and preliminary examination for Wednesday. An attorney has not yet been appointed to handle further matters in this case on Johnson’s behalf, according to court records.
Editor’s note: An earlier version of this story said it was unclear how Rahquan Rajai Johnson regained access to a handgun equipped with a gold switch seized from him by the Hennepin County Sheriff’s office in 2023. The Sheriff’s office has since clarified that the gun is still in their possession. Johnson allegedly possessed an identical handgun with a gold switch when he was arrested in a federal gun case this month.
The pilot was the only person inside the plane, and was not injured in the emergency landing, according to the State Patrol.
