Drunk man tries to buy weed at wrong house at 2 a.m., then continually threatens officer

Robert Hudson, 45, of Gainesville, is being held in the Ozark County Jail without bond in connection with a harassment case that has been filed against him. He was arraigned on June 20 and is scheduled to appear in Ozark County Court before Associate Judge Raymond Gross at 10:30 a.m. July 3. 

According to the probable cause statement, prepared by Ozark County Sheriff’s Lt. Matt Rhoades, at 2:30 a.m. June 15, the officer was assigned to a call of a possible attempted break in on Martingale Drive in Theodosia. 

When he arrived on scene, the homeowners met with the officer to explain what had happened. They said they were asleep inside their home when someone knocked on the front door. They went to the door and looked out the peephole and saw Hudson in a red shirt along with a thin black man with dread locks dressed in a white shirt.

The woman said Hudson kept telling her that he wanted to speak with her “ol’ man.” Both the woman and her husband told the officer that they didn’t know or recognize either of the men. Uncomfortable with the situation, they told the men to leave.

They said Hudson then became angry and began beating on the door aggressively “to the point the victims thought he would break through the door.”

The man inside the home armed himself, thinking Hudson was attempting to break into the home. Then he and his wife attempted to barricade the door to keep the men from getting inside. The suspects left, yelling curse words and threats. While leaving, Hudson kicked open a locked gate leading to the victims’ porch, breaking the gate. The bizarre incident left the victims concerned about their safety, the report says.

The two men got into a gray SUV and drove around the neighborhood for several minutes, the report says. When they passed back by the house, one of the men yelled additional threats to the victims out the window of the vehicle.

After hearing what the victims had to say, Rhoades conducted an area search and located a vehicle at a Theodosia-area bar that matched the description of the suspect vehicle. Rhoades said that as he pulled into the parking lot, he saw a black man standing outside the bar that matched the description of one of the suspects. Upon seeing the officer’s vehicle, the man ducked inside the bar, the statement says. 

Rhoades went inside and found both suspects. He approached them and asked them why they were at that house. 

“Both, who were obviously extremely intoxicated, became extremely belligerent and refused/were unable to answer most of my questions,” Rhoades wrote in the report. 

Rhoades separated the two men to speak with them individually, and  Hudson reportedly told the officer that he was at the house to buy “weed” and that he knew the homeowners were selling it. 

“He became angrier and demanded that I take him back to their house, so he could assault them,” Rhoades said in the report.

He placed Hudson in handcuffs and put him inside the patrol vehicle. He then arrested the other man and began the ride to the Ozark County Jail.

“[Hudson] began yelling threats about assaulting Deputy Sherman, then threatened to assault me multiple times,” Rhoades’ report says. “He demanded I call Sheriff Martin to the jail so he could assault the sheriff. He then continued by saying he would assault Prosecutor Pipkins the next time he saw him by knocking him out. He stated he would ‘beat’ Judge Gross ‘half to death.’ To prove to all of us that we don’t know who we were messing with. He stated that he was serious about the threats and implied that I should take him seriously because he has already assaulted a law enforcement officer in the past and was charged for it.”

Rhoades said the threat-riddled conversation continued for the entire 20-minute drive back to the Ozark County Jail. Hudson said several times that when they got back to the jail, he was going to fight the officer. 

Upon arrival at the jail, Rhodes took Hudson out of the vehicle in order to escort him into the jail booking area. Hudson refused to walk to the jail sally port, the report says, and immediately started pushing against the officer with his chest. 

“I swept his right leg and escorted him to the ground to prevent him from going anywhere. I informed him he was going into jail, and he reluctantly agreed. I got him into the jail and he continued to yell threats,” Rhoades wrote. 

After getting Hudson into the jail, the officer returned to his patrol vehicle for the second suspect. 

“I opened the door where suspect #2 was seated in my vehicle prisoner cage and noticed he had slipped out of both handcuffs, which were now on the floor of the vehicle. He immediately began apologizing for the way he was acting and [began] cooperating with me,” Rhoades’ wrote.

When asked what they were doing at that residence that night, the other man, who isn’t named and isn’t charged, told the officer that he and Hudson met an individual at a Gainesville-area restaurant earlier in the day, and the man had offered to sell the pair marijuana. He said after they got off work, they went to the Theodosia bar, and while there, Hudson convinced him to drive him to the house of their contact earlier in the day to buy marijuana.

He said he drove him, not knowing Hudson was going to begin yelling and threatening anyone. The man said they saw a car in the driveway of one of the houses on that street that looked like the car their potential marijuana-seller was driving when they’d met him at the Gainesville restaurant and thought it must be where the man lived. He said he didn’t know who lived at the house, so he went back to his vehicle and waited for Hudson to return. 

“He knew he was in the wrong for how he handled the situation... After this portion of the investigation, I decided to release suspect #2 to his sober girlfriend at the jail,” Rhoades wrote. 

Hudson was placed into a holding cell for sobering and had minimal additional incidents other than his continuing threats.