A Marshalltown man was arrested Tuesday in North Dakota after deputies surrounded a mobile home near Fargo. Sheriff Paul Laney says they were prepared to treat James Hodson as a dangerous fugitive after getting a tip that he was there in North Dakota’s Cass County.
They set up a command post and started a grid search of the area, then quickly found his vehicle outside a trailer. Deputies surrounded it and told him to come out, though he refused. A Fargo SWAT team was called in and the sheriff says Hodson ran out a back door but deputies there grabbed him and a 12-year-old. The boy, apparently Hodson’s son, was placed in foster care.
The standoff took place at a mobile home court in Argusville, a community of about 150 people a few miles north of Fargo. It’s not clear why the man traveled from Marshalltown to North Dakota. Sheriff Laney says they’re investigating to find out if there’s a reason he headed that direction or if it was just "the luck of the draw." He praised the investigative work of law enforcement agencies in Fargo and the county there. Sheriff Laney says James Hodson had been facing sentencing in Marshall County, Iowa, for a willful injury conviction but took off instead.
Tips from Fargo police and authorities here in Iowa led them to Argusville, where the sheriff says the 38-year-old Hodson had been living with his 12-year-old son for nearly four weeks. The state’s criminal-records database shows several files for Hodson including a 2004 guilty plea to assault.