A man linked to a series of business burglaries and car break-ins, one of them at Jacksonville High School, has accepted a seven-year prison sentence for a string of crimes that includes beating a neighbor with a metal pipe.
Sentencing papers filed Thursday show Gary Allen Johnson, 31, pleaded guilty to second-degree battery, two counts of commercial burglary, two counts of theft and a count of breaking or entering in exchange for the seven-year term imposed by Pulaski County Circuit Judge Leon Johnson. Johnson still faces drug and gun charges in Lonoke County.
Court filings show authorities in Jacksonville, Little Rock and North Little Rock linked Johnson to eight car break-ins, commercial burglaries and a vehicle theft between June 2018 and August 2020, with police arresting him at the scene with stolen property five times, although some charges were dropped as part of his plea deal.
The first burglary attributed to Johnson was the June 28, 2018, break-in at Howard's Liquor on Camp Robinson in North Little Rock, where a thief broke out a front window with a hammer.
The burglary was recorded on security video and shows a long-haired man rifling through a filing cabinet to steal a bag of money. The thief arrived on a scooter that he left behind the business when he ran away with about $2,000, according to an arrest report. Johnson's fingerprints were found on scene, including on the scooter, and he was arrested seven weeks later.
His next felony arrest came shortly before sunrise Sept. 5, 2019, when police called to Jacksonville High School on West Main Street found Johnson, dressed in black but barefoot, being detained by construction workers who said they'd found him hanging from a plumbing pipe in the building after discovering some of their equipment had been vandalized, court filings show.
Johnson told police he was a maintenance man who had been working on the ceiling, but pressed by officers who found some school property had been vandalized, Johnson admitted he'd broken in to try and steal the Segway scooter that belonged to the school's resource officer. The Segway had been in the SRO's office but police found the vehicle in a hallway.
He was arrested Oct. 4, 2019, at the Jacksonville fire station on First Street after firefighters reported a suspicious person going through the trash and police discovered Johnson had a notebook and some papers from a fireman's truck.
The charges were dropped as were charges related to the Oct. 5 break-in at an Arkansas State Police Command Post trailer inside the state fairgrounds on Howard Street in Little Rock. Someone pried open the trailer door and stole two laptop computers and two desk phones, and Johnson's prints were discovered at the scene, according to an arrest report.
Johnson was arrested again two days later at the Knight Drive trailer park in North Little Rock after a resident reported seeing a shirtless, long-haired man rifling through her car. When police arrived, officers found Johnson, with a wallet and an orange Bible that had been stolen from the vehicle of another resident, according to a police report.
Seven weeks later, Jacksonville police were called to Taylor Electric on Center Street about a stolen 2015 Ford F150 pickup. Officers tracked the vehicle to 1809 Craft St. where they arrested Johnson in the driver's seat of the stolen truck, court filings show.
Johnson's next arrest was Aug. 1 when a neighbor called Jacksonville police to report gunfire coming from his home at 200 N. Elm St. When officers arrived they found Johnson with another neighbor, 24-year-old Phillip Edward Hilburn Jr., who was bleeding from cuts to his head. A blood-stained metal pipe was discovered nearby.
Hilburn said Johnson had been shooting off a gun, and that when he went to confront the older man and ask him to stop firing the gun, Johnson and other men attacked him and knocked him out, court filings show. Hilburn said Johnson had shot at him.
Johnson told police he had not been firing a gun, that he had not used a weapon on Hilburn and that no one else was involved. But investigators found spent shell casings, and someone in the Johnson home surrendered a pistol to officers when they asked for the gun.
Johnson was arrested Aug. 28 in Jacksonville after he was seen and photographed rifling through a shed on Southeastern Avenue, but charges related to that case were also dropped.
According to an arrest report, police used an electric stun gun on Johnson after he made threatening and aggressive gestures toward them. The electric shock did not subdue Johnson, who pulled the wires out of his chest, but he surrendered when police got a dog out to subdue him. He kicked an officer in the leg when officers were putting him in a squad car.
Court records show Johnson still faces gun and drug charges in Lonoke County, stemming from an Aug. 14 arrest at the North Center Street Citgo convenience store in Lonoke.
Complaints about a disturbance brought police to the store, where officers discovered that Johnson and another man had been arguing about how Johnson had displayed his pistol at the store, court records show.
Johnson told police the firearm was in the car, and officers found two pistols, along with methamphetamine, marijuana and syringes in a backpack. Johnson said the backpack was not his, suggesting that the bag and its contents belonged to his passenger.