Photo by JEFFREY HASTINGS An SRT member speaks with a police officer outside 99 Seaverns Bridge Road earlier this month, shortly after Fred Fellows, the suspect who is accused of threatening to kill two other men, surrendered peacefully. A judge has denied his request for personal recognizance bail.

NASHUA – A Superior Court judge granted Merrimack standoff suspect Fred Fellows’s request for a bail-modification hearing, but then denied his motion that would have converted his bail to personal recognizance.

Fellows, 57, therefore remains in jail on preventive detention, the order that was imposed at his arraignment and bail hearing on May 4, two days after the incident in which he allegedly threatened to kill two other men during a confrontation that eventually prompted a response by a police Special Reaction Team to 99 Seaverns Bridge Road.

Later in the day, Fellows “surrendered himself peacefully,” police said. He was taken into custody and charged with one count of second-degree assault, a Class B felony; and two counts of criminal threatening and one count of criminal mischief, all Class A misdemeanors.

As for Fellows’s motion for bail-modification hearing, the request was granted by Judge Jacalyn Colburn, and the hearing was put on the docket last week.

Through his attorney, Elliot Friedman, Fellows asked the court at the hearing for personal recognizance bail, with conditions that include he check in every two weeks with Mark Durso, a mental health specialist with Greater Nashua Mental Health who serves as liaison between the agency and the courts.

Durso “would appear at any hearing to discuss” Fellows’s case and answer questions, the motion states.

Friedman wrote in the motion that Fellows had spoken with Durso, and that Durso told Friedman that Fellows “did not present with any obvious risk factors or diagnosable mental health issues.”

Fellows told the court that if released, he would stay with a friend in a neighboring town.

He seeks release in part because, the motion states, he risks losing his Medicaid health insurance benefits if he “is incarcerated much longer.”

In denying the motion, Colburn noted that the court “will consider its decision upon psychological/dangerousness evaluation, release on pre-trial services, and/or acceptance to a residential treatment program,” according to her order.

Regarding the Merrimack incident, Fellows shared the residence with the two men at the time, and allegedly threatened to kill them during a disturbance that stemmed from what they told police was “a stupid argument” between Fellows and one of them.

When the second man pulled Fellows off the first one, Fellows allegedly made the threats, then headed for the stairs to the second floor – where he kept his collection of firearms, the men told police.

At that point the men vacated the house, choosing not to wait around to see if Fellows may follow through on the alleged threats.

Upon learning of Fellows’s collection of firearms and receiving information from the two men regarding the series of events that afternoon, police pulled officers back, set up a perimeter and brought in the Special Reaction Team.

A negotiator was called in from Nashua, police said, and was able to speak with Fellows by phone. A short time later, Fellows surrendered peacefully, police said.

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Dean Shalhoup may be reached at 594-1256 or dshalhoup@nashuatelegraph.com.

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