Attempted break-in ends in search, arrest

BIG LAKE — A woman is facing a litany of charges after Alaska State Troopers say she tried to break into a man’s home and, failing that, stole what she found on the porch.

According to a statement Trooper Rick Sawyer filed in court, officers were summoned to Ermine Place at 1:36 a.m., Friday. They talked to a man who told them Rachel M. Johnson and Gary L. Butcher — the man knew them by name — tried to break into his house earlier that evening.

“He was asleep inside his residence when he was woken up by a loud banging noise on his porch,” Sawyer wrote. “He looked out his window and observed Johnson pushing on the door knob trying to make entry.”

The man told troopers that Johnson told Butcher the door was dead-bolted, then grabbed clothes, tools and a Skill saw off the porch and put them in a black Nissan pickup with big tires. He said Johnson then proposed getting in through the window. That’s when he confronted her.

“He opened the door, confronting Butcher and Johnson while holding a hammer for protection,” Sawyer wrote.

Soon after, the couple sped away. All of this Sawyer learned later. When summoned to the house at 1:36 a.m., the first priority was to see if they could find that pickup. And they did, relatively quickly. Sawyer wrote that he spotted it as soon as he turned onto Hollywood Road. Sawyer was driving westbound, the pickup eastbound.

“I began turning around to follow the vehicle when I observed it suddenly pull into the westbound lane behind me and come to a stop on the side of the road in the wrong lane,” he wrote.

The pickup then continued eastbound, but he stopped it soon after. Johnson was driving. Butcher was nowhere to be found and Johnson denied being with him that night. Sawyer said he found footprints leading from where the pickup stopped on the wrong side of the road.

Three troopers and a police dog showed up to track Butcher down.

Eventually troopers spotted him “walking toward Hollywood Road from the wood line with his hands in the air,” Sawyer says in his report. “I observed Butcher to have wet pants and heavy breathing as he stated he was cold.”

As he warmed up in the back of a patrol car, troopers read him his rights and then started talking to him. He told them he’d gone to the house with Johnson, his girlfriend, and that he’d waited in the truck until he saw the altercation between Johnson and the man who lived there, at which point Johnson got in the truck and Butcher drove them away from the house.

“Butcher stated that he observed the trooper car on Hollywood Road and did not want to get arrested on his warrant (for violating probation on a drug misconduct charge) and pulled over, fleeing into the woods on foot. Butcher stated that Johnson had switched seats and began to drive,” Sawyer wrote.

Right around here is when Sawyer noticed another trooper pulling Johnson out of a patrol car “to stop her from breaking the rear window as she was striking with her forearm.” That, added to what Sawyer described as “unreasonably loud” noise coming from Johnson after troopers told her to quiet down, added up to a disorderly conduct charge.

Troopers estimate the value of the stolen property at more than $50 but less than $500. Damage to the front door totaled $100. Johnson was jailed at the Mat-Su Pre-Trial Facility on $10,000 bail. She faces criminal mischief, theft, hindering prosecution, disorderly conduct and burglary charges. Butcher was jailed on his warrant and a new charge of driving on a revoked license. His bail was set at $6,000. Jail records Monday afternoon showed both were still incarcerated, though Johnson had since been moved to Hiland Mountain Correctional Facility in Eagle River.

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.