Eric Hendryx and Alexis Johnson in past booking photos. Both have experience in vehicle theft.
NOVATO – On Wednesday, October 21, the Novato Police Department issued a Community Bulletin regarding a recent arrest. Officers had responded to a report of a suspicious person in the vicinity of Cielo Lane. The caller reported seeing a male subject in an apartment complex breezeway who was not known to be a resident.
Police were called to this neighborhood on a report of suspicious persons.
Officers located the subject and his female companion shortly thereafter. As officers commenced questioning the subjects, the man fled on foot when he was asked to produce identification. Additional officers arrived to assist and soon recovered information linking both subjects to a motorcycle parked nearby. The motorcycle turned out to have been reported stolen out of Oakland.
A perimeter was established as Deputies from the Marin County Sheriff’s Office responded to assist. Approximately 45 minutes later, an officer spotted the male suspect, who had fled again north from the 200 block of Posada Del Sol. Minutes later the suspect was apprehended by an Novato PD K-9 team.
Hendryx was caught a couple of blocks away after failing to evade the officers.
The suspect was identified as 39-year-old Oakland resident Eric James Hendryx. The female was identified as 26-year-old Alexis Michelle Johnson, also a resident of Oakland. Both Hendryx and Johnson were booked into the Marin County jail for auto theft charges. It was also learned that Eric Hendryx was wanted by the California Department of Corrections for violations of his parole.
Hendryx had been arrested on Thursday, August 6 in Modesto, at a home in southwest Modesto near Mark Twain High School. He was charged with vehicle theft, possession of stolen property, resisting arrest, and violating parole. He reported an address in Berkeley as his residence at that time.
Records going back to 2006 show he was charged in May of that year with vehicle theft, possession of stolen property, reckless evading with wanton disregard for public safety, and assault and battery on an officer. In March of 2009 he was arrested for a similar set of charges – vehicle theft, stolen property, reckless evasion, assault with a deadly weapon (non-firearm) on an officer, assault likely to cause great bodily injury, petty theft with a prior, and failure to appear in court as ordered. In June of 2011 he was charged with driving under the influence.
One of the Novato Police K9s was of valuable service in apprehending the suspect.
Alexis Johnson is no stranger to the courthouse either. She has been arrested multiple times for vehicle theft, possession of stolen property, burglary tools, reckless evasion, and resisting arrest. She was also charged at various times with possession of controlled substances and hypodermic needles, giving false information to officers, and violating probation or parole. The earliest record found of a vehicle theft arrest was in April of 2012, following two drug related arrests in 2011. She was charged again with vehicle theft and hit-and-run in December 2012.
In November of 2013 she was involved in a high-speed chase with Vacaville police late at night and in a stolen car. She was charged with the usual set of offenses, along with driving without a license and possession of methamphetamine. She was charged again with vehicle theft, possession of burglary tools, stolen property and a syringe by Oakland police in September 2014.
She had a couple of probation violations in November 2014, and was arrested again in April of this year in both Alameda and Hayward for vehicle theft charges, though those may have been from warrants related to the earlier charges. More recently, just a week prior to her latest arrest, she was charged on Thursday, October 15 with giving false information to an officer.
The motorcycle the couple were accused of stealing was recovered, and the investigation is continuing. The Novato PD currently has three canines that have been trained in criminal search and apprehension, narcotics detection, and detection of articles and evidence.
