It’s been 4 months since a surprising interaction between two off duty Northeast Ohio police officers and a truck driver from Texas at a Hinckley bar was captured on body camera footage.
That footage surfaced on Youtube about two months later.
Ideastream Public Media’s Matt Richmond spoke with Josh Boose about the subsequent investigations into those officers’ and how the public found out about this unexpected incident.
JOSH BOOSE: So first, Matt, could you give a rundown of what happened here?
MATT RICHMOND: So on the night of April 26th, two police officers were apparently out drinking at a hole in the wall bar in Hinckley called the Buzzard’s Roost. The truck driver from Texas, who's of Eritrean descent, a country near Ethiopia in East Africa, was also there.
Those off-duty officers and the truck driver ended up in a physical altercation.
JB: And this has spurred several investigations on really multiple levels of government. Officials are looking into the officer's conduct, right?
MR: Yeah, it's a pretty amazing list.
Ultimately, the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives got involved. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency, Hinckley and Brunswick Police, and the Medina County Prosecutor all got involved.
The Texas Department of Public Safety was called to check on a commercial driver's license. The FBI and the U.S. Attorney's offices in Cleveland and Detroit all heard about this.
And the officer's actual employers, Cleveland Police and the Lake County Narcotics Agency, through the Lake County Sheriff's Department, say they're eventually going to do their own investigations.
JB: So everything we know about what happened inside that bar is from body cam footage from the Brunswick and Hinckley police officers who responded to that call, right?
MR: Right. You see on the video, when the responding officer from Brunswick arrives, there are two people kind of wrapped up on the ground. It's Donald Kopchak, a Cleveland officer who at the time was part of a federal task force, and the Eritrean truck driver.
Kopchak tells the officer he's been wrestling since he was a little kid, and that's how he learned the leg lock maneuver that he was using to restrain the driver.
The other off-duty officer who was drinking at the bar, Daniel Lajack, works for the Lake County Narcotics Agency and is also assigned to a federal task force called Strike Force, which investigates gun and drug cases around Northeast Ohio.
On the body cam Lajack tells the Brunswick officer they believe the truck driver was an undocumented immigrant and he and Kopchak had to act because he might blow up a mall the next day.
JB: Blow up a mall the next day? So, where'd that concern come from?
MR: There's no support on any of the hours of footage that we've obtained for that idea.
On the video, police say the truck driver was there from Texas, had a valid commercial driver's license, he was making a delivery to a nearby Aldis and staying at a hotel. All that was checked on by Brunswick and Hinckley officers, record show.
Lajack and Kopchak were apparently in the bar drinking, saw the Eritrean truck driver from across the bar and started questioning him for reasons that are still unclear.
The truck driver did not want to answer their questions, and according to witnesses in the bar, Lajack and Kopchak were being aggressive and the truck driver was just having a friendly conversation with a couple at the bar before all this started.
JB: Okay, so was anyone ultimately arrested back in April, once those officers who responded sorted everything out? I'm assuming they sorted everything out that night.
MR: No, there were no arrests.
The officers who responded from Hinckley, who were, you know, responsible for the crime because it was in Hinckley, both can be heard on body cam video saying criminal charges could be brought against Lajack and Kopchak and not the truck driver.
Around midnight, those officers put in a call to the Medina County Prosecutor who had them check Lajack and Kopchak’s alcohol levels. Both officers refused that test, the video shows.
It should be noted that the apparent victim in all of this, the truck driver, made it very clear he didn't want to press charges.
We tried to reach Lajack and Kopchak but were unsuccessful.
JB: All right, so what is the status of potential criminal charges today?
MR: There have been no charges filed.
There was a police report posted online that was confirmed by the Hinckley Police Department that included several possible charges for Lajack and Kopchak.
The FBI in Cleveland will not comment on whether there's an open investigation.
Cleveland police placed Kopchak on restricted duty.
The Lake County Narcotics Agency placed Lajack on paid administrative leave on July 1st after almost two months on desk duty.
We'll continue to follow any developments, but it's unclear what, if anything, will happen next.
JB: Looking forward to updates, Matt. Thank you.
MR: Thanks, Josh.
