Competency evaluation ordered for Penn Township man accused of killing father, aunt

A Penn Township man accused of stabbing his father and aunt to death will undergo another competency evaluation to determine if he is able to stand trial next month for their slayings.

Neal Hubish, 42, is accused of killing his father, Arthur Hubish, 71, and aunt Maria Puskarich, 76, inside his father’s Burrell Hill Road home on Nov. 9, 2021.

Hubish, who has a history of violence and mental health issues, told police he awoke upon hearing the pair arguing and found them “laying in a pool of blood” inside a hallway. He later admitted to police he repeatedly stabbed them, according to court records.

In court Tuesday, Hubish’s defense attorney, Brian Aston, read a statement from his client. In the statement, Hubish asked Westmoreland County Common Pleas Court Judge Meagan Bilik-DeFazio to reduce the charges against him to two counts of simple assault and to release him from jail, where he has been held since the time of his arrest.

“Do you know what you are charged with?” Bilik-DeFazio asked.

Hubish responded that he believed he was charged with aggravated assault.

Aston told the judge his contact with Hubish has been limited in recent months. Meetings with his client at the county lockup were canceled after Hubish refused to be handcuffed en route to speak with counsel, Aston said.

During a pretrial hearing last April before Bilik-DeFazio, Hubish was removed from the courtroom after shouting obscenities and insults at a sheriff’s deputy, pushing a wooden chair toward individuals and asking the judge to have the deputy removed from the courtroom.

That incident resulted in Hubish being transferred to Torrance State Hospital, where he was evaluated and deemed competent to stand trial.

The judge on Tuesday ordered Hubish to undergo another competency evaluation ahead of his upcoming murder trial, set to begin Feb. 6.

Hubish’s mental health has been a factor in multiple other criminal cases, including once instance in 2016 when he was arrested on charges that he held his mother captive in her home for a day after she had picked him up from the county prison as he was paroled on three previous convictions.

Hubish was sentenced to about two years in jail for that incident.

In 2019, he was charged after police said Hubish assaulted his father during an argument near his home.

A year later, Hubish was charged after he was accused of choking an officer who was taking him into custody on a mental health warrant.

Hubish was convicted and sentenced to serve up to 23 months in jail in the 2019 and 2020 cases.

Police last summer charged Hubish with assaulting a guard at Westmoreland County Prison. Those cases are pending.