A status hearing for Jordan Andrade, the 24-year-old Porter Township man charged in the November stabbing death of Valparaiso University graduate student Varun Raj Pucha, was delayed to March 22 after two experts came to conflicting conclusions following their mental health evaluations of Andrade.
The status hearing was delayed to allow for a third evaluation.
“I would hope that we would get to the third report within the month,” said Porter Superior Court Judge Jeffrey Clymer, who is presiding over the case. Andrade’s charges were upgraded on Nov. 8 to one count of murder, a Level 1 felony, and one count of aggravated battery, a Level 3 felony, after Pucha died in a Fort Wayne hospital Nov. 7 following his stabbing in the head with a box cutter.
The 29-year-old Indian man was to have received his master’s degree in information technology last December. He was stabbed in the head on Oct. 29 while sitting in a massage chair at Planet Fitness in Valparaiso.
Court documents state that Andrade told police he was seated in a massage chair next to Pucha and that Pucha had threated to assassinate him. A pathologist ruled Pucha’s death a homicide caused by a stab wound to the head, according to court documents.
Clymer also delayed to April 15 the final pre-trial hearing of Domonic Brothers, the Gary man accused along with Jawon Martin of murdering Derek Hartz, a 35-year-old Hobart man they allegedly met on a gay dating app.
Brothers, 28, who also goes by the name Domonic Weaver, and Martin, 29, who also goes by Jada Monroe and is from Danville, Virginia, are each charged with one count of murder and one count of murder in perpetuation of a robbery, both Level 1 felonies. They are also each charged with robbery, a Level 2 felony.
Martin is being tried in the court of Superior Judge Michael Fish. Hartz’s partially nude body was found on a deflated air mattress around 10:30 a.m. on June 13th by a fisherman in the Chustak Salt Creek Fishing Area at 331 West County Road 600 North in Portage Township, according to court documents.
He was wearing a blood-soaked t-shirt and had multiple stab and blunt force trauma wounds to his head and chest. Brothers has been in custody since July 28 and has pleaded not guilty, as has Martin.
Both are in custody at Porter County Jail.
Shelley Jones is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
