Wai'anae suspect guilty of burglary

By David Waite
Advertiser Staff Writer

A Wai'anae man who came very close to being sent to prison for the rest of his life for the 1998 shooting death of an Army helicopter pilot at a beach cabin pleaded guilty yesterday to a charge of attempted burglary and will likely face a sentence of no more than 10 years.

Keala Leong, 21, told U.S. District Judge Helen Gillmor that he had planned to steal whatever he could from the porch of the cabin at Wai'anae Army Recreation Center when he went there near midnight June 2, 1998.

If there was nothing on the porch to take, Leong said, he planned to enter the cabin to take whatever he could find.

Plans to burglarize the cabin went awry, however, when pilot John Latchum Jr. and his wife, Wendy, stepped out to the porch to try to chase away a group of young men who the Latchums thought were trying to break in.

Latchum was shot in the chest by a .22-caliber bullet and died a short time later.

Leong was acquitted in December of charges that he attempted to rob the Latchums.

And while a jury found Leong guilty of felony murder and attempted burglary in the case, Judge Gillmor had no choice but to declare a mistrial when a juror said moments after the verdicts were read that she did not feel Leong was guilty.

Bryson Jose and Roberto Miguel, who stood trial along with Leong, were convicted of all charges against them, including felony murder, which carries a mandatory sentence of life in prison without parole.

They will be sentenced this summer.

Leong will be sentenced Sept. 17. The federal charge of attempted burglary carries a prison term of up to 10 years.

U.S. Attorney Steven Alm said a decision was made not to retry Leong on the felony murder charge since "the two others most culpable" for Latchum's death — Jose and Miguel — were convicted on the murder charge .

If Leong were retried on the murder charge alone, not all of the evidence that was used to prosecute the three men during the first trial would be available to the prosecution during a second trial, Alm said.

In exchange for his pleading guilty to the attempted burglary charge, prosecutors agreed not to pursue the felony murder charge against Leong.

Alm said that although the plea agreement spares Leong from the possibility of being convicted on the murder charge if he were to be retried, and life imprisonment if found guilty, it still means Leong will spend "a considerable number of years" in prison.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Ronald Johnson, lead prosecutor in the case, said that he had discussed the plea agreement with Wendy Latchum and that "she trusts the judgment of the (U.S. attorney's) office."

Gillmor denied a request by Leong's lawyer, Rustam Barbee, that Leong be turned over to his grandparents and placed under house arrest and electronic monitoring while awaiting sentencing.

Barbee said Leong had matured significantly since the night Latchum was killed.

Barbee said Leong was concerned that his grandparents are old and that he might not ever see them again if he is given a long prison sentence and sent to the Mainland to serve it.

But Gillmor said the record shows that Leong's grandparents have had trouble controlling him.