The second complainant was Erica Freeman, a home-health aide and single mother of two who lived in a small house outside Emporia. She had been driving her mother's relatively new SUV to a medical appointment when Nolan stopped her near an interchange. The vehicle was registered in her mother's name, which Erica explained immediately and offered to verify by phone. Nolan claimed the arrangement was suspicious and threatened to have the car towed unless she permitted a search.
Erica consented because she feared missing the appointment and losing her ability to take her mother to treatment. She had not understood that she could refuse consent without automatically becoming a criminal, and Nolan made no effort to clarify the difference between a request and a lawful command. He searched the SUV, found a bag of prescription medication bearing her mother's name, and questioned her about the pills despite the matching documents. He eventually released her with a warning about cooperating more quickly in the future.
She filed a complaint only after a neighbor encouraged her. The initial interview lasted twenty minutes and ended with an investigator suggesting that allowing the search indicated she had not felt threatened. Erica told Miriam how that reasoning had haunted her. "He said he'd take the car if I didn't agree," she explained. "I agreed because I needed to get my mother to the doctor, and then they told me agreeing proved he hadn't pressured me. How was I supposed to win that?"
Her daughter, now sixteen, entered the room while Miriam was speaking with her and asked whether the investigator wanted to know about the night Erica came home. The girl remembered her mother sitting on the edge of the bathtub, still wearing her work clothes, staring at a wall while the shower ran. Erica gently asked her daughter to wait in the living room because the interview was difficult enough already. Afterward, she apologized to Miriam for the interruption, and Miriam told her there was nothing to apologize for.
The third complainant, Isaiah Mercer, had worked part-time at an auto-parts store while studying for a teaching credential. Nolan stopped him after midnight as he drove home from a late shift in a restored pickup his grandfather had left him. The trooper said the truck looked stolen because its paint did not match the age of the model, and he accused Isaiah of lying about the restoration. Isaiah showed photographs of the work and a matching registration, but Nolan ordered him out and searched the cab anyway.
Isaiah was detained for more than an hour while the trooper sought confirmation that the pickup had not been reported stolen. His supervisor later told him there was no reason to expect a formal apology because the stop ended without arrest. Isaiah kept studying, completed his credential, and became an elementary-school teacher, but he took a longer route home afterward to avoid that particular patrol area. When the first video of Morgan's stop appeared online, he recognized Nolan's voice before the news identified the officer by name.