A District Court Judge ruled the Commonwealth presented enough evidence to sustain 39 straw purchase gun related charges against a Philadelphia man Wednesday in Bristol Borough District Court.
Deon Hudson 25 of Philadelphia was charged last month with 39 counts of unlawful sale or transfer of a firearm and conspiracy to commit of unlawful sale or transfer of a firearm
The preliminary hearing which lasted a little more than one hour in Bristol Borough District Court included testimony from a Bucks Count Detective and an ATF Agent.
As part of the testimony by the law enforcement officials two of the guns purchased and resold, allegedly by Hudson were recovered by Philadelphia Police Department as part of two separate shooting investigations.
Those firearms were recovered on teenagers in Philadelphia within 50 days of the date of purchase, investigators said in court documents.
Investigators obtained an extensive, but not exhaustive, list of all guns purchased by Hudson and found he purchased all 9-mm handguns, including seven in a two-week span in August 2021. He purchased two of the guns in a suspicious transaction from Johnston’s Sporting Goods in Croydon section of Bristol Township.
The owner of the gun store testified at Wednesday’s hearing too. AR
Judge Frank W. Peranteau Sr. after hearing the evidence presented and arguments form Hudson’s public defender ruled there was enough evidence to sustain all the charges alleged in the criminal complaint, filed as part of a joint investigation by the Bucks County District Attorney’s Office, the Office of Attorney General’s Gun Violence Task Force and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in March.
Hudson is scheduled to appear at the Bucks County Court of Common Pleas on May 26 for formal arraignment. He remains at Bucks County Correctional Facility in lieu of 10 percent of $200,000.00 bail
At the time of Hudson’s arrest District Attorney Matt Weintraub said “Illegal firearms purchases like the ones this prolific straw firearms purchaser has repeatedly made are often linked to other, violent, gun crimes.”
