By Tanya Eiserer
The Dallas Morning News
DALLAS — A motorist is accusing a uniformed off-duty Dallas police officer of coming up to his vehicle on Thursday morning on the freeway with his gun drawn and threatening to shoot him in an alleged road-rage incident.
Officer Anthony Leonard, who works at southeast patrol, was placed on restricted duty while public integrity detectives look into the allegations made by Troy Williams, a 38-year-old Dallas resident.
“When you’re a police officer, you don’t do things like this, especially when you have that uniform on,” said Mr. Williams, who moved here from Louisiana about a year ago. “The [other] officers I have encountered here in Dallas are really polite people. I guess I just ran across a bad apple today.”
Officer Leonard hung up when contacted on the phone Thursday afternoon by a reporter.
Mr. Williams said he was on his way to work about 6 a.m. Thursday on Interstate 35E when he noticed that a car behind him was “driving erratically and blowing its horn and flashing its headlights.”
Mr. Williams said he thought that someone was trying to get his attention, so he slowed down and the car nearly slammed into him. He said when traffic came to a standstill near downtown, the driver got out of the car with his gun drawn and approached his vehicle.
He said the man was screaming obscenities and stating, “I will shoot you if you cut me off again.”
Mr. Williams, who wrote down the man’s license plate, said the man threatened to arrest him before getting back in his vehicle.
Officer Leonard told his supervisors when he arrived at work that he had been involved in a traffic incident, that nobody was hurt and that he just wanted to notify them in case the person complained.
Mr. Williams said he called 911 when he arrived at work in Las Colinas, where he is an accounting assistant for a dialysis service provider.
Officer Leonard, who was hired in 1992, has a disciplinary history that includes improperly releasing a prisoner in the field and using profane or indecent language, department records show.
Copyright 2007 Dallas Morning News