It took Marion County sheriff’s deputies exactly eight minutes Sunday afternoon to recover a stolen truck – and make an arrest to boot.
Deputies received a call at 3:55 p.m. from a Georgia man who told them that his 2013 white Dodge Ram 3500 pickup with a mountain bike rack in the back had been stolen from Silver Springs Park. He said his wife’s cell phone was in the truck and they were tracking the vehicle, which was near the intersection of Larch and Juniper roads, a sheriff’s office report states.
As a sheriff’s corporal arrived in the area, he was told that the truck was at SE 66th Street driving toward Baseline Road. The corporal quickly spotted the pickup at 4:03 p.m., made a traffic stop and put 38-year-old Jamey Bryan Hendrixson in handcuffs, the report says.
Hendrixson was carrying a Florida identification card and claimed that he knew the owner of the truck, calling him by his first name. But he later changed his story and said he only knew the owner’s name through paperwork he found inside the truck.
Another deputy brought the pickup’s owner and his wife to the scene of the traffic stop, where he told the corporal they were vacationing in Ocala and had parked the truck at the park before paddling the Silver River for about two hours. He said when they returned to the parking lot, the truck, valued at $50,000, was gone. He added that he left the keys and his wife’s phone inside the unlocked truck because he didn’t want to risk losing them in the river.
After being read his rights, Hendrixson told the corporal that the “CWBs” (Crazy White Boys) and “The Outlaws” were trying to kill him. He said an unknown person had texted a phone belonging to a friend saying he needed to get out of town and would find a white truck with a bike rack in the back in the parking lot of Wild Waters, the report says.
When asked about his suspended license, Hendrixson told the corporal the person texting his friend’s phone said he now had a hardship license. He said he had stopped at a recycling center to toss out some water bottles and then planned to hook his camper to the truck and head out of state, the report says.
After the truck was released to the owner, Hendrixson was transported to the Marion County Jail, where he gave the corporal the Casio watch he was wearing, valued at $25, and admitted to stealing it from inside the truck, the report says.
Hendrixson was booked into the jail at 5:39 p.m. and charged with larceny/petit theft, unarmed burglary of an unoccupied vehicle, grand theft of a motor vehicle and driving with a suspended license (second offense). He was held on $10,000 bond and is scheduled to appear in a Marion County courtroom on Oct. 16 to answer to the charges.
A check of Hendrixson’s driving record showed that his license has been suspended 10 times, revoked once for a year for DUI and canceled indefinitely another time – all since Aug. 9, 2014. A check of his criminal history showed that Hendrixson was adjudicated guilty on March 29, 2017 for driving with a suspended or revoked license. A check of his Marion County Jail records showed that he’s been housed in the facility 15 times since July 1999.