Man accused of assaulting Raleigh police officers will undergo mental-health evaluation

A judge on Monday ordered a mental-health evaluation for a 44-year-old man accused of assaulting several Raleigh police officers during a traffic stop last week.

Frederick Darnell Hall remained in jail Monday afternoon, when he made his first court appearance through a monitor.

Hall faces four felony counts of assaulting and injuring officers, following an intense altercation Friday near the intersection of Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Garner Road in Southeast Raleigh.

Wake County District Court Judge Eric Chasse ordered Hall to under a mental-health evaluation as part of pre-trial release. Chasse also reduced Hall’s bond from $45,000 to $20,000.

Videos that have been viewed thousands of times online show Hall strike and throw punches at several officers during the confrontation. Once the officers brought him to the ground, they hit him with a baton, kicked him and stomped on his hand.

Hall’s family has said he has a mental illness and has been hospitalized several times since 2012. Hall has not been taking his medication as prescribed, his brother, Douglas Hall, told The News & Observer.

Patrick Latour, a Wake County prosecutor, told the court he believed Hall’s confrontation with police was indicative of a mental-health issue. Latour recommended that a mental health-evaluation for Hall “may be appropriate to have the ball start rolling, if this is where this is going to end up.”

Latour said the officers wanted to talk to Hall after receiving a 911 call from a concerned citizen. In arrest warrants, police wrote that they considered the vehicle Hall was driving “suspicious.”

The prosecutor said Hall had a previous encounter with law enforcement in 2016 and was charged then with resisting arrest and assault. Those charges were dismissed because of “allegations of mental-health problems that needed to addressed,” Latour said.

Charles Caldwell, a public defender who represented Hall on Monday, told the court that Hall has owned a home since 2001 on Aaron Drive. Caldwell also said Hall works two jobs — at a McDonald’s in Cary and a freight company in Raleigh.

Hall worked 20 years for a heavy equipment company in South Raleigh, Caldwell said.

“He’s still making payments on his home,” Caldwell told the judge. “He has a stable, vested interest in Wake County.”

Hall had more than half a dozen supporters in the courtroom, including family members, community activists who have advocated publicly on his behalf and his pastor, Chris Jones of the Ship of Zion Church in Southeast Raleigh.

Douglas Hall said his brother’s altercation with police Friday might have been triggered by the 2016 incident. Frederick Hall was beaten during an altercation with law enforcement on Interstate 540, his brother said.

“That’s probably why he took his shirt off,” Douglas Hall said, referring to Friday’s altercation when his brother was shirtless while struggling with the officers. ”The last time, they maced him, pulled his shirt over his head and beat him unconscious.”

Hours before Hall made his first court appearance, representatives of the Raleigh Police Protective Association, a union, said the officers acted appropriately during the altercation.

After Monday’s hearing, Douglas Hall said he appreciated the judge’s decision to reduce his brother’s bond, so he can bring him home.

“So that I can not only have my eyes on him further than what I saw on the screen, but embrace him and give him some love that he’s probably longing for at this moment,” he said.

Douglas Hall said he saw the police union press conference, but he said all of the details have not yet come out in the case, and he would reserve the right to speak until he finds out what really happened.

“Knowledge, wisdom, understanding,” he said. “If you don’t have knowledge, you can’t understand. If you don’t understand you can’t make a wise decision.”

This story was originally published August 20, 2018 at 4:16 PM.