Posted on: Friday, January 18, 2002

Anti-gay attackers draw 5-year terms

By Jan TenBruggencate
Advertiser Kaua‘i Bureau

LIHU'E, Kaua'i — Two men who admitted to attacking and terrorizing a group of gay campers at Polihale Beach Park last year were sentenced to five years in prison yesterday.

The late-night attacks shocked the island and galvanized the gay community.

Martin Rice was one of about 15 gay campers who were awakened after midnight at the remote park when someone knocked burning tiki torches onto two of their tents, setting one ablaze, stole items from vehicles and drove at them in a car, yelling anti-gay slurs.

The victims said they felt terrorized in the darkness. One had to crawl from his blazing tent. Another testified at a preliminary hearing that one of the assailants swung a bamboo rod at him. Others said they believed that the two men, who got into a car after the attacks at the camp, were trying to run them down.

Eamonn Carolan, 19, and Orion Macomber, 20, had been camping at the state beach park far out on West Kaua'i, at the southern end of the Na Pali Coast. Girls who had been with them testified they drank a lot of beer and had been smoking marijuana before the girls went to sleep.

The gay group was camping a short distance down the beach, with its site marked by kerosene-fired torches and rainbow-pattern "gay pride" flags, used to show fellow campers how to find the location.

Carolan and Macomber, who have been in jail since the May 26 attacks, were originally charged with three counts each of attempted murder.

They were allowed to plead guilty to reduced charges, the most serious of which was a class B felony, attempted assault in the second degree. That charge got each of them a five-year prison term from 5th Circuit Court Judge Clifford Nakea.

They also pleaded to lesser charges, including assault, criminal property damage, terroristic threatening and unauthorized entry into a vehicle. Those charges yielded four-year sentences. The sentences will run concurrently.

Both young men apologized in court to their victims. Carolan, facing the gallery, offered to apologize individually and personally to each of the campers if that were possible.

Carolan's attorney, Mark Zenger, said the young men probably will first appear before the state paroling authority in about four months, when they have served a year in jail.

He said that while the acts were clearly wrong and stupid, they were not intended to physically hurt anyone.

Eight of the victims were in court yesterday, but none spoke at the sentencing.

"We had put together our impact statements and sent them to the court," said Rice, who is a former director of the group Lambda Aloha, which conducts education and advocacy for Kaua'i residents who are bisexual, gay, lesbian and transgendered.

Judge Nakea indicated that he had read the statements.

Rice said that he was not without empathy for the two men. He said that Carolan and Macomber were also victims in a sense. But despite that, he said, the court's sentence "minimalized" the crime.

"The potential for death was there. The sentences seemed light," Rice said.