Wilcox

NASHUA – The man charged with felony criminal threatening for allegedly going after a couple with a rotary cutting tool in a downtown parking lot has been released from jail with orders to continue treatment and stay out of trouble.

John Wilcox, 47, of 32 Willow St., Apt. A, was jailed on $50,000 cash or surety bail after the weekend incident, but a Superior Court judge on Tuesday agreed to personal recognizance bail so long as Wilcox keeps up the treatment he receives from Harbor Homes and Greater Nashua Mental Health Center.

Other conditions include Wilcox abide by a nightly curfew beginning at 6 p.m., possess no firearms, and have no contact with the two alleged victims.

He is due back in court April 11 for a dispositional hearing.

According to police, an officer on patrol was driving up Main Street around 9:30 p.m., and upon passing Pearson Avenue, noticed a man who appeared to be “yelling at someone confrontationally,” while allegedly waving what appeared to be a “bladed object” at two people in the Pearson Avenue parking lot.

When the officer heard “a clicking sound” coming from the object, he ordered the man, later identified as Wilcox, to drop it, which, reports state, he had to repeat “a few times” before Wilcox complied.

The officer identified the object as a rotary cutting tool, which has “a sharp, razor type edge … which is capable of causing death, or serious bodily injury,” he wrote.

While the officer took Wilcox into custody, another officer spoke with the two alleged victims, police said. The woman declined to give a statement, saying she didn’t want to get involved, police said, but the man said he thought the object was a firearm or a Taser, and that he “feared for his safety” during the incident.

Wilcox was transported to police headquarters for booking, after which, in a post-arrest interview, he allegedly told detectives he had been in an altercation with “an unknown black male,” and allegedly displayed the cutting tool to defend himself from that person, police wrote.