A 39-year-old Carrollton Ridge man who charged at Baltimore police officers with a machete and a large fixed-blade knife has been ruled not criminally responsible for the attack, with a judge finding that his schizophrenia left him unable to understand his actions were wrong. Russom Gebretsadik pleaded guilty to second-degree assault and carrying a dangerous weapon Wednesday, but Circuit Judge Gale Rasin found that his severe mental illness, not criminal intent, drove the December 2023 confrontation that ended with an officer shooting him in the leg.
According to The Baltimore Banner, Judge Rasin said there was abundant evidence Gebretsadik suffered from a mental illness, describing him as psychotic, prosecutorially delusional, and reporting burning sensations he believed others were inflicting on him. Maryland Department of Health doctors had already found him not criminally responsible, and prosecutors and defense attorneys raised no objections to that conclusion. The hour-long hearing was translated into Tigrinya, Gebretsadik's native language spoken in Eritrea and Ethiopia, since he speaks little English. Gebretsadik himself told the court he was not in full control of himself at the time.
How the Pratt Street Encounter Unfolded
The episode began around 9:15 a.m. on December 30, 2023, when officers responding to a burglary call in the 2000 block of West Pratt Street spotted Gebretsadik running naked in the street, according to the same Banner report. Assistant State's Attorney Tracy Varda said officers followed him into a residence because they were worried about his mental state; CBS Baltimore reported officers had entered a convenience store after an employee said the man had gone upstairs into rear apartments, prompting them to call for backup and retrieve a ballistic shield before climbing the building's interior staircase.
From the top of the stairwell, Gebretsadik hurled objects down at officers, the Banner's account states. Body-worn camera footage released by police weeks after the incident showed him throwing an extension cord and other items before hurling a knife that struck an officer's ballistic shield, per Police1. Gebretsadik then charged downstairs at officers holding a machete and a large fixed-blade knife, and the Baltimore Police Department has identified Officer James Stokes, a nine-year department veteran assigned to the Southwest District, as the officer who fired five shots, striking Gebretsadik in the femur. Officers then provided aid to him, and then-Commissioner Richard Worley said at the time that the aid probably saved his life. Officer Stokes was placed on routine administrative review following the shooting.
A Second Violent Episode Months Earlier
The Pratt Street confrontation was not an isolated incident. Gebretsadik also pleaded guilty to one count of second-degree assault for attacking and seriously wounding a nurse at Sinai Hospital on August 10, 2023, and Judge Rasin similarly found him not criminally responsible in that case, ordering him into the health department's care. Rasin said a doctor attributed those actions to severe detachment from reality; the Banner reports Gebretsadik told forensic evaluators he believed medical staff were inflicting pain on him through radiation while he was being treated at the Northwest Baltimore facility.
The nurse he attacked told the court that someone could have died because of his actions, but said she wanted help and close monitoring for Gebretsadik rather than punishment, according to the Banner's reporting. Under Maryland Criminal Procedure Code § 3-109, a defendant is legally deemed not criminally responsible if a mental disorder at the time of the offense left them unable to appreciate the criminality of their conduct or conform to the law, a standard explained by Thomson Reuters Westlaw, with the burden falling on the defense to prove the claim by a preponderance of the evidence.
Commitment to a Strained State Hospital System
Gebretsadik appeared at Wednesday's hearing remotely from Clifton T. Perkins Hospital Center, the state's maximum-security psychiatric facility in Jessup, where Judge Rasin ordered him committed indefinitely for psychiatric care. The 289-bed hospital, established by the Maryland General Assembly in 1959, evaluates and treats criminal defendants found incompetent or not criminally responsible statewide, per the Maryland Department of Health. Under state law, people deemed not criminally responsible can be released only after health department doctors find that treatment means they no longer pose a danger to themselves or others, and an administrative law judge must then agree with those findings at a hearing where prosecutors and defense attorneys can weigh in.
That commitment comes as the facility faces its own troubles. Criminal defendants ordered to Perkins for competency restoration or forensic evaluation have faced wait times of nine to ten months as Maryland's psychiatric facilities operated at roughly 95% capacity in 2026, according to Becker's Hospital Review, delays that have previously prompted state judges to hold health officials in contempt. In April 2025, The Joint Commission issued a preliminary denial of accreditation to Perkins following inspections that cited chronic understaffing, leadership turnover, and patient safety concerns, as reported by the Washington Post, action that followed state legislative hearings into conditions at the hospital.
A Broader Push for Earlier Intervention
Baltimore City Circuit Court's Mental Health Court, presided over by Judge Rasin, is designed to divert mentally ill defendants into structured psychiatric treatment rather than traditional incarceration, according to Baltimore Witness, and Rasin handles all of the city's circuit court competency and criminal responsibility cases. In August, Maryland expanded court-ordered mental health options by launching an Assisted Outpatient Treatment program in Baltimore City, allowing family members, friends, or health professionals to petition circuit court judges for mandatory outpatient treatment plans before a crisis escalates, as Hoodline reported in its piece on the state's new mental health program. Gebretsadik's case, with its two separate violent episodes tied to untreated psychosis in the months before his arrest, illustrates the gap that program aims to close.
