The man accused of swinging two machetes at a bus stop in Central Square on Aug. 1, slashing one bystander, and then barricading himself in his apartment in The Port for 18 hours had been released by a judge who did not order a mental evaluation requested by prosecutors, according to a spokesperson for Suffolk County District Attorney Kevin Hayden.
Princiano Faustin, 51, was released on his own recognizance July 29 after being arrested in Boston on charges that he assaulted a police officer, threatened to commit a crime and resisted arrest.
Prosecution and defense agreed to the release before Boston Municipal Court judge John E. McDonald ordered Faustin freed, with the next hearing scheduled Sept. 11, according to court records. The trial docket said the judge ordered a mental competency examination by a courthouse clinician, who didn’t recommend treatment or further assessment, but Hayden’s spokesperson, James Borghesani, said no evaluation was ordered despite the prosecution’s request for one.
Borghesani also said prosecutors asked for $250 bail. It wasn’t clear why prosecutors agreed to Faustin’s release on his own recognizance, as reflected in the docket, if they had wanted bail to be set. Faustin is now at Bridgewater State Hospital for another competency exam and facing nine charges, including armed assault to murder, mayhem and four counts of assault with a dangerous weapon. Cambridge police arrested him Saturday in his apartment at 243 Broadway, where he had holed up after officers pursued him from Central Square. The bystander he allegedly slashed was taken to Massachusetts General Hospital with nonlife-threatening injuries, police said.
During the standoff, police tossed a “pepper ball” containing a chemical irritant into a window of the six-story building in an effort to force Faustin out. He didn’t leave, but the fumes sent many other tenants outside, where they waited for hours. Police say they are investigating the action.
Faustin’s next hearing in the Cambridge case is Aug. 22. Middlesex district attorney Marian Ryan’s office is seeking to have him held without bail because of dangerousness. A phone message was left Friday for his public defender lawyer, Juliana McCorkle; her office said she probably wouldn’t get the message until Monday.
Faustin had lived at 243 Broadway, a building owned by affordable housing developer Just A Start, since April 2024, said Just A Start real estate director Joshua Sawyer.
Sawyer said the police standoff was “a situation we had never encountered before.” Police contacted the building manager, Maloney Properties, and “shared critical information about keeping people safe” but did not tell management “about their plans,” including using the chemical irritant or ask about the building’s ventilation system, Sawyer said.
“We’re reflecting and talking with the management team about what else we could be doing,” he said. Just A Start employed cleaning crews after the incident “to make sure the property was safe and clean for our residents,” he said. The developer is “reaching out with resources for residents” who might be traumatized by the incident, he said.
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