Pocatello man charged for two separate attacks, one including nurses

POCATELLO — A man who was arrested for allegedly injuring others with pepper spray is facing two sets of charges after police also connected him to a hospital attack.

Jerry Bardell Huber, 41, has been charged with felonies for aggravated battery and battery against a healthcare worker; and a misdemeanor for simple battery, court records show.

Pocatello police responded to a 911 call reporting a disturbance on Wilson Avenue around 2:45 p.m. Oct. 13, according to an affidavit of probable cause. The caller reportedly said a woman sprayed him with pepper spray.

When officers arrived, they spoke with the victim, who was wiping his face with a rag. The officers asked if he could identify the person who sprayed him; he allegedly pointed at a woman standing on the porch of the home where the attack occurred.

One officer spoke with the woman while others searched the home.

While speaking with the woman outside, the first officer heard calls over the radio from the second officer inside the home, requesting EMS.

“(The second officer’s) voice sounded as though he was in distress,” the affidavit says, so the first officer entered the home. The second officer was “coughing heavily,” according to the affidavit, and reported an elderly man was locked inside one of the home’s bedrooms and needed to be removed.

The first officer approached the room where the man was, but he was immediately “overwhelmed” by what the officers believed to be pepper spray.

The officer knocked on the door, announcing himself as police. A woman opened the door and “appeared to be having a panic attack as she attempted to exit the bedroom,” the affidavit says. She told the officer she was struggling to breathe due to health issues.

A man, later identified as Huber, was also inside the room. According to the affidavit, he was holding a rag over his face and coughing.

The two officers escorted both individuals out of the home, where everyone slowly recovered from from the affects of the pepper spray.

The first officer returned to the accused woman to continue their conversation.

She told the officer she had served an eviction notice to the victim 30 days prior, and handed a handwritten note to the officer. The officers informed her the letter was not a legal eviction notice, then asked why she felt the need to use pepper spray.

“I did not know they were going to use pepper spray,” she reportedly responded.

When asked who “they” was, the woman reportedly said, “Jerry Huber.”

She and Huber spoke the night before about evicting the victim, she said. The two decided Huber would “physically remove” the victim from the home, according to the affidavit.

The woman once again said she did not know Huber would use pepper spray.

Earlier that day, had Huber came to the home and asked her to go to her room, she said. He “did not want her in the middle of the altercation that would occur.”

From inside her room, she heard Huber knock on the victim’s door and demand that he leave, the woman told officers. Huber allegedly told the victim he had 30 minutes to leave or he (Huber) would use pepper spray. But, the woman said, she did not see any pepper spray, because she was inside her room.

After speaking with the woman who was locked in the room with Huber, and getting many of the same details provided by the first woman, officers determined there was sufficient probable cause supporting Huber’s arrest.

Prior to the arrest, officers learned Huber was wanted in connection to an attack at Portneuf Medical Center.

According to an affidavit of probable cause, Huber was being treated by the Behavioral Healthcare Unit at PMC when he struck one of the nurses in the head with his arm. During the altercation, a second nurse suffered a cut to her hand.

Police reports describe the second nurse as having a cut roughly four-centimeters-long on her right hand. The first nurse, reports show, had a red mark on the right side of her face and head.

Huber was arrested for aggravated battery and battery related to the pepper spray incident, and battery on a healthcare worker for the incident at PMC. He was taken to Bannock County Jail, where he was booked.

He was released Oct. 17 after posting two separate bonds of $5,000 apiece.

Though Huber has been charged with these crimes, it does not necessarily mean he committed them. Everyone is presumed innocent until they are proven guilty.

If he is found guilty of all charges, Huber could face more than 18 years in prison.

He is scheduled to appear in court before Magistrate Judge Carol Tippi Jarman for a preliminary hearing on Oct. 30.