A 25-year-old Summerfield woman with a hefty criminal background is back behind bars – just 18 days after her last trip to the Marion County Jail.
Briana Rachele Johnson, who lives at 16620 S.E. 102nd Court Rd., was arrested Monday night at the Summerfield Wal-Mart, located at 17961 S. U.S. Hwy. 27/441. A Marion County sheriff’s deputy responded to the store and spoke with a loss prevention employee, who said she saw Johnson switching price tags on clothing items. She said Johnson then went to the self-checkout area to pay for the items with the wrong price tags, a sheriff’s office report states.
The loss prevention officer provided the deputy with video surveillance footage of Johnson paying for the clothing with the switched price tags. The seven items included two hoodies, two tops, a shirt, a T-shirt and a corset totaling $81.78 before tax. The new price tags totaled $21.36, with a total loss to the store of $60.42 before tax, the report says.
After being read her rights, Johnson admitted to switching the price tags “due to her going through financial difficulty. A background check showed that she had been convicted of grand theft auto and grand theft on Jan. 16, 2019. She was placed under arrest and transported to the Marion County Jail.
Johnson was charged with petit theft (third or subsequent offense). She was being held on $2,000 bond and her next court date hasn’t yet been set, jail records show.
Johnson is no stranger to the legal system, having been arrested at least 10 times in Marion and Lake counties since April 2016 on a litany of charges. Before Monday’s arrest, her most recent stint in the Marion County Jail came on Oct. 15 in connection with a previous charge of driving while license suspended or revoked. She also was arrested in March for failure to appear in court on the same charge.
Johnson was arrested in May 2017 after a nasty tiff with another woman who confronted her about drug abuse. She allegedly slapped a plastic bag out of the woman’s hand and began screaming, then slapped the woman’s neck and scratched her arm, according to an arrest report from the Marion County Sheriff’s Office.
Johnson was jailed in April 2016 after a physical altercation with her sister’s boyfriend over a cable modem. In that incident, she was accused of attacking the man the moment he opened the door to his residence. He had to call out to his girlfriend to have her help pull Johnson off of him, a report states.
In January 2018, Johnson was arrested by a Lake County sheriff’s deputy after he spotted her driving in the early morning hours without headlights. She was stopped in the area near Palm Street and Lemon Street and attempted to give the deputy a false name while also claiming that her driver’s license had been stolen, a report says.
A search of Johnson’s jacket turned up methamphetamine concealed in a pack of cigarettes. Pills and a syringe were found in the vehicle and the deputy determined that she was driving on a suspended license and wanted on Marion County warrant.
All told, in the past 4½ years, Johnson, who also has lived in Lady Lake and Weirsdale, has faced charges – some more than once – of driving with license suspended or revoked, battery, grand theft, grand theft of a motor vehicle, unarmed burglary of an unoccupied dwelling, dealing in stolen property, possession and/or use of drug equipment, giving false identification to a law enforcement officer, failure to appear on a domestic battery charge, burglary with assault or battery, possession of methamphetamine, possession of a controlled substance, possession of Clonazepam and giving false identification to a law enforcement officer.
