BY JOE PYRAH – Daily Herald
A former UVSC student arrested in June on charges that he illegally bought guns is competent to stand trial.
In a brief hearing Thursday in 4th District Court, Kidus Yohannes was declared competent. His preliminary hearing is set for Sept. 20.
Yohannes is charged with two felony counts of providing false information for a gun background check and a third felony of possessing a credit card stolen from one of his roommates.
Flanked by two sheriff’s deputies, with two others scanning the courtroom, Yohannes stood passively in his red and white striped jail shirt while his attorney, Richard Gale, asked the judge not to delay the hearing.
It was the prosecution that asked for the competency examination, Gale said in a separate interview. Yohannes has maintained all along that he is competent.
Yohannes, 20 and an Ethiopian immigrant, was attending Utah Valley State College when he was arrested on gun violations. His roommates told police he was building an arsenal of weapons and showing a fascination with mass violence.
Yohannes’s roommates told police that he had grown despondent after losing a job.
The incident occurred less than two months after Virginia Tech student Seung-Hui Cho killed 32 people on that campus.
At the time of Yohannes’s arrest in June, police were looking for two AK-47 semi-automatic rifles that they believe Yohannes bought at a local pawn shop. Orem police Lt. Doug Edwards said Thursday those weapons have not been found.
Yohannes had a criminal record before the June arrest. On March 28 in Provo, he was stopped on traffic violations — police said he threw litter from his car, ran a red light and made an improper turn. Police found in his vehicle a Yugoslavian SKS rifle that appeared to have been converted into an automatic weapon, said Provo police Captain Cliff Argyle.
Yohannes was then arrested for investigation of carrying a concealed weapon without a license. That gun charge was subsequently dismissed as part of a plea agreement in which he pleaded guilty to possessing another person’s identification. He was fined $790, according to the state’s criminal database.
A judge suspended Yohannes’s yearlong jail term, gave him credit for 10 days already served and put him on probation with the condition he stay out of trouble.
Court records also show a 2005 case in which Yohannes was charged with possessing a weapon on school grounds. That charge was dismissed when he agreed to plead guilty to a companion charge of graffiti.
More recently, police in Provo and Orem discovered that they had both been conducting separate investigations to determine how and why Yohannes was acquiring weapons and what he planned to do with them. No motive has been determined.
The investigations were merged after a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent alerted Orem detectives to a parallel investigation in Provo.