Pregnant SLO County woman was stabbed to death, and a stolen CHP car led to chilling crime scene
Investigators on Thursday detailed in court how a Heritage Ranch man led officers on a high-speed chase in a stolen CHP patrol vehicle hours before sheriff’s deputies discovered his longtime girlfriend and their unborn child stabbed to death in the home they shared with their two children.
Daniel Raul Rodriguez Johnson is accused of murdering his partner, 27-year-old Carrington Broussard, two days before she was to undergo a medical procedure to deliver the couple’s baby.
Johnson has pleaded not guilty to two counts of murder, as well as felony charges of carjacking, evading and resisting a police officer, unlawfully taking a vehicle, and a misdemeanor count of exhibiting a weapon.
The charges carry with them several sentencing enhancements including for the use of a deadly weapon and a “special circumstance” enhancement that alleges he committed two offenses of murder in the first or second degree.
Johnson, 33, faces a maximum of life in prison if convicted of all counts.
If jurors find the special circumstances enhancement true, Johnson faces life without the possibility of parole.
Broussard was a San Miguel native who graduated from Paso Robles High School and worked at Rock ‘N’ Robles Pizza in Paso Robles.
She was found dead March 3, 2019, in a home in the 2800 block of Sorrel Lane in Heritage Ranch, where the couple were living together in the Lake Nacimiento community with their 2- and 4-year-old daughters.
The couple had been together nine years, and the unborn baby was to be delivered by C-section two days, a detective testified.
Officer describes high-speed chase in stolen CHP car
Johnson was in court Thursday for a preliminary hearing during which Superior Court Judge Craig van Rooyen heard testimony from first responders and investigators, the first time details of the alleged crimes have been revealed in court.
Johnson had been arrested hours before the discovery of Broussard’s body after he allegedly stole a CHP vehicle that had stopped to assist him when his Kia crashed into a mailbox near Highway 46 West and York Mountain Road.
The two children were in the vehicle, and he left them behind when he fled.
CHP Officer Michael Egan testified that he pulled up to the scene of the Highway 46 crash and saw Johnson speaking to two ambulance personnel. As Egan spoke with Johnson, he described him as “fidgety and nervous.”
“He came across as though ... it was likely I’d be arresting this gentleman for being impaired,” Egan said, noting that he didn’t feel Johnson was a threat.
While he spoke to the EMTs, with his back to Johnson, Egan said one of the medics called out and he saw Johnson running toward his patrol vehicle, which was idling with the driver’s side door open.
He said the car contained a locked shotgun and semi-automatic rifles, as well as his duty bag carrying a baton and long-bladed knife. Egan’s cell phone was also in the car, he said.
Egan rushed Johnson, who made it into the driver’s seat, and Egan struggled to remove Johnson from the vehicle as it began pulling away.
Egan said his attempts to radio dispatch were unsuccessful because his patrol car was too far away, and he didn’t have his cell phone. Eventually, backup arrived and Egan and another CHP officer followed Highway 46 West in Johnson’s direction.
The two caught up and lost Johnson a couple times as weather worsened and speeds reached upwards of 100 mph, Egan said.
Johnson turned onto Highway 1 south of Cambria and ran through a red light at Ardath Drive, Egan said, narrowly missing an oncoming vehicle.
In San Simeon, sheriff’s deputies deployed a spike strip, which was successful in shredding the stolen CHP vehicle’s front driver side tire.
Egan described Johnson driving on the wheel rim, sending sparks into the air, before he lost control and crashed on the side of the highway near Piedras Blancas Light Station.
Johnson fled on foot into the brush but soon emerged waving Egan’s knife from his duty bag.
“He was holding it out for us to see it,” Egan said. “He was yelling for us to shoot him.”
Instead, officers shot him with five bean bag munitions, causing him to drop the knife, and he was taken into custody, Egan said.
Bloody knife discovered in car
After the Sheriff’s Office found the address associated with Johnson’s Kia, Deputy Brian Fiorentino testified, he went to the Sorrel Lane house to conduct an inquiry and found the front window broken. No one answered the door, he said.
“It made me think something had happened,” he testified, and interviewed neighbors who reported hearing screaming the night before.
Given the go-ahead to investigate, Fiorentino said he forced the front door open, found evidence of a struggle, and discovered Broussard lying on her back in the kitchen in a pool of blood.
Shelby Liddell, a forensic specialist for the Sheriff’s Office, testified that she documented blood all through the house beginning outside the children’s bedroom.
Liddell also testified that she examined the Kia and found a total of four knives, including a folding knife in the center console covered in dried blood.
Sheriff’s Coroner’s Sgt. John McDaniel testified that an autopsy on Broussard showed nearly two dozen sharp-force injuries to her upper body, including a stab wound approximately three inches deep on the left side of Broussard’s temple and another on her neck, which McDaniel said would be fatal.
In addition, he said Broussard had suffered multiple blunt force trauma injuries over her body, had a swollen face and had suffered skull fractures.
Defendant admitted to suffocating victim after stabbing
Sheriff’s Office Det. Steven Archibald testified that he interviewed Johnson for about five hours following his arrest, and described him as “upset and sad.”
“He felt like he had a weight on his shoulders he wanted to get off,” Archibald said.
Johnson’s interview was scattered and his story changed as he repeated his version of events, Archibald testified, but eventually a timeline emerged toward the end of the interview.
Johnson ultimately told Archibald he had snorted a line of methamphetamine in the afternoon of March 2, after having been clean for a period of time.
Archibald said Johnson told him Broussard confronted him about his drug use, and a verbal argument that began in the children’s room turned physical when she began punching him.
“He stated he had enough ... so he grabbed her by the throat and struck her in the face with a closed fist,” Archibald said.
The couple “essentially (traded) punches” as the fight spilled into the hallway and living room, where Archibald said Johnson told him Broussard broke the front window with a chair and yelled outside for help.
At some point, Broussard tripped and fell at the entrance to the kitchen and the fight stopped, Archibald said. He said Johnson told him he wanted the couple to go to the hospital to check on the unborn child, but Broussard refused.
“The victim told him that she regretted having children with him, and having a third child with him,” Archibald said.
At that, Johnson told Archibald, he struck her in the back of the head and she began crawling into the kitchen. Archibald said that’s where Johnson’s recollection fades, and next he remembered, she was lying in the kitchen bleeding from stab wounds, including to Broussard’s neck and head.
“He knew she had been stabbed. He didn’t recall stabbing her, but he knew he had to have stabbed her,” Archibald testified.
Johnson told the detective that he at first tried to stop the bleeding with a towel, but when that was unsuccessful, he placed his hands over her nose and mouth “to speed up the process of her death.”
After Broussard was dead, Archibald testified Johnson told him, he left the house with the two children in his Kia.
Following testimony and brief arguments by counsel, van Rooyen found prosecutors established probable cause to hold Johnson to answer on all charges, moving the case toward trial.
Johnson is scheduled to be back in court March 8.
This story was originally published February 18, 2021 at 6:52 PM.
