Penn Township man charged in double homicide found competent to stand trial

A Westmoreland County judge has ruled a Penn Township man charged with the 2021 killings of his father and aunt is competent to stand trial.

Police contend Neal M. Hubish, 42, killed his father, Arthur Hubish, 71, and aunt Maria Puskarich, 76, inside their Burrell Hill Road home Nov. 9. Arthur Hubish was pronounced dead at the scene, while Puskarich died on her way to Excela Health Westmoreland hospital in Greensburg, police said.

Neal Hubish initially told investigators he awoke to discover the pair wounded after hearing them arguing, court records say. He later admitted to police he repeatedly stabbed his father and aunt, according to court papers.

During a pretrial hearing in April, Hubish was removed from the courtroom after shouting obscenities and insults at a sheriff’s deputy, pushing a wooden chair at them and asking the judge to have the deputy removed from the courtroom.

After the hearing, Common Pleas Judge Meagan Bilik-DeFazio ordered that Hubish be transferred to Torrance State Hospital for a competency evaluation, which was completed June 30, according to court records.

“Based on this competency evaluation, the court finds that the defendant has sufficient ability to consult with counsel with a reasonable degree of rational understanding and has a rational as well as factual understanding of the proceedings,” the judge wrote in her court order.

Hubish was to be returned to the county prison to await trial and was ordered to participate in ongoing treatment designed to maintain his competency for trial.

Hubish has a long history of violence, including several incidents that involved family members, according to court records.

In February 2016, he was arrested on charges that he kept his mother captive in her home for a day after she had picked him up from the county prison after his parole on three convictions.

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

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

The next year, Hubish was charged after he was accused by police 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 said he had been released from the county prison less than a month before the killings.