A defense attorney sought a mental health evaluation Friday for a man who appeared in court on charges of luring two firefighters into a home doused with gasoline and pulling a knife on them.
Melvin Jordan, 47, was out on bond because he had been granted a new trial in a murder case from 2005. On Friday, he was ordered held without bail on charges of attempted murder, aggravated kidnapping, aggravated unlawful restraint and unlawful use of a weapon.
A battalion chief and a lieutenant responded to a car fire in the garage of Jordan’s home in the 7700 block of South Marshfield Avenue in the Auburn Gresham neighborhood on Tuesday, according to police.
After the fire was put out, Jordan told the two he smelled natural gas in his basement and asked if they could check on a possible leak, Cook County prosecutors said in court Friday.
“You go first,” the chief told Jordan, who grabbed a battery-operated screw gun and removed a solid wooden board blocking the basement entry, according to Chicago Fire Department spokesman Larry Langford.
Once in the basement, the firefighters said they did not smell gas and saw Jordan “quickly” retreating upstairs, Langford said. They followed and, at the top of the staircase, Jordan confronted them with a large knife. They also detected the strong odor of an accelerant and saw the doors of the home were boarded up.
“He ordered them back in the basement,” Langford said. Instead, the firefighters began struggling with Jordan. Eventually, the battalion chief was able to get on the radio and alert crews outside and police.
Prosecutors said Jordan pointed an 8-to-10-inch knife at the firefighters and instructed them to move from the kitchen to the home’s living room, telling them, “You’re not going anywhere” and instructing them to “sit down.”
Jordan allegedly asked to speak with someone from the FBI.
Firefighters broke a window and pulled the two firefighters to safety. Jordan, meanwhile, barricaded himself in a bathroom with a different knife and an empty gun holster, prosecutors said.
After telling authorities he wanted to harm himself, firefighters broke down the door and Jordan was arrested and taken to a hospital. A 9mm handgun was allegedly recovered from an upstairs area of the home.
Court records show Jordan was sentenced to 35 years in prison for a 2005 murder and an additional six years to be served consecutively for attempted murder. Court records show that he was granted a new trial in 2019 after arguing he was not effectively represented by his lawyer and had wanted to claim self-defense in the case.
Jordan was released after posting $45,000 bond. A new trial date hasn’t been set.
Jordan had also been previously convicted of three armed robberies in which he used a gun, prosecutors said.
“Clearly there is something out of the ordinary going on,” Jordan’s defense attorney, Joshua Kutnick, told Judge Maryam Ahmad. He said Jordan appeared to have been experiencing “substantial issues during this time.”
Kutnick asked for Jordan to receive a mental health evaluation while held in custody.
Kutnick said Jordan has been appearing regularly for hearings in his pending murder case while out on bond and has strong family support, including from several family members who attended the hearing Friday.
All of them declined to comment.
Noting that Jordan was on bond at the time of the confrontation with the firefighters and had violent convictions in his background, the judge ordered he be held without bail on the new charges and also revoked his previous bond.
He is due back in court Thursday before Judge Lawrence Flood in the pending murder case.
Mohammad Samra contributed.
