Advertiser Staff and News Services
BIG ISLAND
Big Isle to revise council districts
HILO, Hawai‘i — Mayor Harry Kim has appointed a nine-member Hawai‘i County Council Reapportionment Commission to revise council district boundaries.
Based on early estimates of population growth on the Big Island, which is believed to have about 150,000 residents, the Kona and Puna districts are expected to gain strength while North Hilo, Hamakua and North Kohala may lose.
Commission members are: Antoinette Bello, president of the Pepe‘ekeo Volunteer Fire Station; retired schoolteacher Byron Toma; retired firefighter Lawrence Balberde; former Hawaiian Homes commissioner Abbie Napeahi; business owner Jeanne Fuller; lawyers Lloyd Van De Car and Mark Van Pernis; retired lawyer Jack Ferguson; and retired hotel and restaurant official John Fernandez.
The panel has until the end of the year to finish its work.
Killing suspect unfit to face trial
HILO, Hawai‘i — A Big Island judge has ruled that one of two defendants in the 1994 killing of a Kaua‘i man is mentally unfit for trial.
Judge Riki May Amano said Oliver L. White, 27, of North Dakota, suffers from organic brain damage and cannot assist in his own defense. Amano said White received head injuries in an automobile accident six years ago and suffers from memory loss.
White and co-defendant Jason K. Santos, 29, are accused in the Sept. 30, 1994, death of Vernon Souza Jr., 31, of Kaua‘i. Souza, a horse trader, was visiting Hilo when he was robbed and his throat cut. His burned body was found along remote Saddle Road.
Santos also has offered a mental incapacity defense. The judge has not ruled yet in his case because of a delay in providing files to a three-member psychiatric panel.
Both suspects were extradited from the Mainland last fall.
White’s trial had been scheduled to start yesterday. What happens to him next will be determined at a May 24 hearing. Prosecutors want him to remain in custody.
Man reconvicted of kidnapping, rape
HILO, Hawai‘i — Allen Paul Branco has been convicted a second time of the 1995 kidnapping and rape of a 14-year-old Puna girl.
It took less than a day of deliberations yesterday for a Big Island jury to find Branco, 43, guilty. The former Puna man will be sentenced April 5 by Judge Riki May Amano, who gave him a 30-year term after his first conviction in 1997.
The state Supreme Court granted a retrial because Branco’s court-appointed attorney had allowed the jury to hear prejudicial evidence that his co-defendant, Sam Pua, was serving a life term for murder in an unrelated case.
Branco testified the victim told him she was 18 and willingly took part in the June 14, 1995, incident. The victim disputed his account.
KAUA‘I
Kaua‘i group offers $1,000 scholarship
LIHU‘E, Kaua‘i — The Margaret Sloggett Fisher Scholarship Committee will give a $1,000 scholarship in the 2001-2002 school year to students in historical preservation, museum studies, history, anthropology, Hawaiian studies, ethnic studies or American studies.
Graduate students and college juniors and seniors who are Hawai‘i residents can write the committee at P.O. Box 1631, Lihu‘e, HI 96766. For information, call (808) 245-3202.
MAUI
Lahaina Whalefest to feature Cousteau
LAHAINA, Maui — Marine conservationist Jean-Michel Cousteau will kick off Lahaina’s seventh annual WhaleFest by joining schoolchildren in a beach cleanup today at Kahekili Beach Park north of Ka‘anapali.
Cousteau will take part in a variety of cruises and other events during WhaleFest, which runs through March 7. Free activities include nightly outdoor slide shows and lectures by marine naturalists at 7:30 p.m. in Campbell Park. An Ocean Arts Festival will be held from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday at Banyan Tree Park.
WhaleFest is coordinated by the LahainaTown Action Committee and sponsored by the Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale National Marine Sanctuary, the Maui Visitors Bureau, Ka‘anapali Beach Hotel, KPOA Radio, Maui Princess, Maui Dive Shop, Atlantis Submarines, America II and Community Work Day.
For tickets, call (808) 667-9193 or visit the Lahaina Visitor Center in the Old Lahaina Courthouse. For more information, phone the recorded event hot line at (808) 667-9194 or check the Web site www.visitlahaina.com.
Equestrian arena to be built on Maui
HA‘IKU, Maui — Work on an equestrian arena at 4th Marine Division Park in Ha‘iku is expected to start soon after a groundbreaking ceremony at 10:30 a.m. Saturday.
The arena will be named after late Maui County Councilman Tom Morrow, who died in a small-plane crash on Moloka‘i in 1996. Morrow, a horseman, was an early supporter of the project.
The Tom Morrow Equestrian Arena Committee is planning to use $175,000 in county money and land donated by A&B Properties to begin initial work on the project, which will be developed in stages, starting with a rodeo arena. The group is counting on donations of cash, goods and services for the remainder of the work.
For more information, call Sue Guille at (808) 878-6933.
Contraflow trial to begin on Maui
WAILUKU, Maui — A trial contraflow operation will begin tomorrow afternoon in an effort to alleviate rush-hour congestion on Haleakala Highway at the Hana Highway intersection, the state Department of Transportation announced yesterday.
From 3:30 to 6 p.m. weekdays, traffic in the center lane of Haleakala Highway will be reversed for three-tenths of a mile to provide two lanes going uphill. That will enable vehicles in the right-turn lane on Hana Highway to head Upcountry without having to merge into traffic.
Traffic control signs and cones will be placed along the highway to designate contraflow operations. Left turns out of the Ameron access road onto Haleakala will not be permitted during contraflow hours.
Tsunami experts to address meeting
WAILUKU, Maui — A trio of tsunami experts from the Big Island and O‘ahu will be featured Saturday at a Maui symposium presented by the University of Hawai‘i-Hilo Center for the Study of Active Volcanoes and the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
The free event will be held from 9 a.m. to noon at Maui Memorial Medical Center.
Presenters are George Curtis, a tsunami researcher and a UHH affiliate professor, Dan Walker of the Honolulu Civil Defense Agency, and William Mass of the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center on O‘ahu. They will discuss what causes tsunamis and how they differ from wind-generated waves.
The program is being held in cooperation with Project Impact Maui. More details are available by calling UH-Hilo at (808) 974-7631 or checking the Web site www.uhh.hawaii.edu/~nat_haz.
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