Staff file photo / Ed Runyan Clyde E. Hudson is shown at left with his hands up with lots of police officers, some in SWAT gear, surrounding him on Cambridge Avenue on Youngstown’s South Side after a 90-minute standoff that ended peacefully Feb. 26. Hudson is being evaluated to determine if he is competent to stand trial.

YOUNGSTOWN — Last month, Mahoning County Common Pleas Court Judge Maureen Sweeney ordered that Clyde E. Hudson Jr., 40, be evaluated to determine if he is competent to stand trial on a weapons charge resulting from a Feb. 26 standoff with police at a South Side home.

Hudson, of Willis Avenue, was indicted April 17 on a felony charge of being a felon in possession of a firearm and a misdemeanor charge of menacing after coming out peacefully from a home on Cambridge Avenue Feb. 26 after a standoff with police lasting about 90 minutes.

The Youngstown Police Department sent numerous officers to Cambridge Avenue, closing off the street at South Avenue and Gibson Street while they tried to talk to Hudson.

A police report stated that Hudson had been staying with a woman at the home more than three years, but on Feb. 26, the woman was upset that Hudson did not “contribute to her household and called him a freeloader,” according to the report.

Hudson got angry and screamed at the woman. He pulled out a gun and pointed it at her while she was sitting on the couch in the living room, the report states. He threatened to shoot up the house and “put one in your head,” the report stated.

Hudson then fired in the direction of the woman, and they screamed at each other while the woman called 911, the report states. She ran to her car and fled.

The woman told police she had a surveillance camera inside the home.

She pulled up the camera on her phone and showed an officer video of Hudson threatening her and shooting at her, the report states. The woman apparently was not injured.

A 911 dispatcher could hear Hudson threatening to shoot up the house and shoot her, the report noted. The video showed Hudson entering the basement at the time the officers arrived at the home, indicating that Hudson had not left.

The report stated that officers arriving on Cambridge Avenue were told the man was armed and inside the house. A Youngstown officer gave commands to Hudson over a loudspeaker and asked him to exit the home, but he did not. Officers then learned that Hudson had disabled the surveillance cameras.

Family members indicated that Hudson was communicating with them. A sergeant requested that the SWAT team come to the scene, and some Youngstown SWAT officers arrived.

After several tries, family members convinced Hudson to come out, and he walked out the front door and down the driveway, where officers took him into custody, the report states.

Sweeney’s Nov. 10 order for an evaluation followed a Nov. 7 motion for competency filed by Hudson’s attorney, Jerry Ingram. It states that Dr. Jessica Hart of the Forensic Center of Northeast Ohio in Austintown had already evaluated Hudson once this year after Ingram questioned whether Hudson was sane at the time of the alleged offenses in a Sept. 26 not-guilty-by-reason-of-insanity filing.

Hart provided a report Oct. 29 stating that Hudson did not “currently have the capacity to understand the nature and objectives of the legal proceedings or to adequately assist in his defense,” Ingram stated.

Hart stated in her report that it is the forensic center’s policy not to proceed with a sanity evaluation if it is determined that the individual is “not currently competent to stand trial.”

Hart recommended that Hudson, who is free on bond, attend “restoration services” at the Forensic Psychiatric Center in order to “ascertain whether he could be restored to competency.”

No determination on that question has been documented yet in court records.

EARLIER CASE INVOLVING POLICE

In an earlier case, Mahoning County Common Pleas Court Judge John Durkin sentenced Hudson to five years in prison in 2011 after he was found guilty at trial of felonious assault and a weapons offense in a Feb. 14, 2010, incident in which Youngstown police officers were sent to a South Side bar for gunfire, according to court documents and Vindicator news coverage at the time.

A Youngstown police officer arrived at a “chaotic” scene with lots of cars parked on each side of the street and about 100 people. Witnesses stated that a blue Chevrolet was involved in the gunfire on Hylda Avenue.

The officer testified that he drew his gun and ordered the driver of the Chevy to turn off the car and ordered Hudson, the driver, and a passenger to place their hands in the air. But Hudson “pulled out and attempted to strike the officer, who jumped out of the way and began a foot pursuit of the car.”

The Chevy was blocked in by police cruisers, and the driver and passenger got out and fled on foot. Two officers apprehended Hudson.