A Reddick man who claimed to sell a big-screen television for $3 was arrested Monday by Marion County sheriff’s deputies.
Dennis Alexander Johnson, 34, was taken into custody after a neighbor in the 15000 block of NW 29th Terrace reported his residence being broken into and his 70-inch Samsung television missing. The man told a deputy that the TV was worth about $1,000.
While the deputy was at the neighbor’s house taking a report, Johnson’s mother told him she had seen her son placing a very large television in the back of a white Buick on Monday morning at about 7:15 a.m. She said she had been at his house at 10 p.m. the night before and the television wasn’t there, a sheriff’s office report states.
As deputies were speaking with Johnson, a witness reported that the television was at “Diesel’s” house, who reportedly lived nearby. Johnson agreed to take deputies there and when they arrived at the home in the 4600 block of NW 155th Street, the man gave them the TV, which matched the description of the stolen set.
The man told deputies that Johnson had come to his house earlier that morning because he knew he needed a TV to replace a broken one. He said he agreed to pay Johnson $20 for the TV once he verified it worked and he “assumed it wasn’t stolen” because Johnson’s mother watched them load it into his car. He also said that once he arrived home, he realized the TV was cracked so he didn’t pay for it.
The TV was returned to its owner and Johnson was taken to a nearby sheriff’s substation for questioning. He told deputies he had been sitting on his porch the night before around 11:30 p.m. when a man driving a maroon Lincoln pulled up to his house and sold him the TV for $20. He said he didn’t see the man’s face because it was dark but described him as having “nappy hair and dirty clothes.”
When Johnson told deputies he then sold the TV for $3, the report states that they confronted him “with how little sense his story made since he lives one house away from the victim.” But he continued to stick with his story, the report adds.
Johnson, who has spent time in the Marion County Jail four times March 2007, was charged with burglarizing an unoccupied dwelling while unarmed, dealing in stolen property and larceny/grand theft between $300 and $5,000. He was being held on $20,000 bond and is scheduled to appear in a Marion County courtroom on Sept. 14 at 9 a.m. to answer to the charges.