Judge Rules Hilbun Mentally Competent to Stand Trial : Courts: The former letter carrier is to appear for a preliminary hearing Jan. 22 in connection with March rampage that left two people dead and six hurt.

A Superior Court judge ruled Monday that former letter carrier Mark Richard Hilbun is competent to stand trial on charges of killing two people and wounding six others during a two-day rampage that included a shooting inside the Dana Point post office.

Judge Robert R. Fitzgerald ordered Hilbun to appear for a preliminary hearing on Jan. 22 at Municipal Court in Laguna Niguel.

Hilbun, 39, has been charged with two counts of murder and seven of attempted murder, and with other counts in connection with crimes that terrorized much of South County last March.

The judge was asked to rule on Hilbun’s competence after two court-appointed psychiatrists disagreed as to whether the former Dana Point resident is capable of understanding the charges against him.

Hilbun, who appeared in court Monday, is being held without bail in the psychiatric ward of the Orange County Jail. He has lost about 40 pounds and now weighs about 120, according to his attorney, Deputy Public Defender David C. Biggs.

Last June, Hilbun suffered a concussion and broke a vertebra in a fall from a second-story walkway in the jail. Biggs said Hilbun intentionally jumped from the walkway.

Hilbun is accused of fatally stabbing his mother, Frances, and her dog at the woman’s Corona del Mar home on March 6.

Prosecutors say that Hilbun then drove to the Dana Point post office, from which he had been fired in December, and shot two postal workers, one fatally. Five other people were wounded over a two-day period in Dana Point, Newport Beach and Fountain Valley in attacks that police attribute to Hilbun.

Hilbun was arrested while drinking cocktails and watching television in a Huntington Beach sports bar.