Girls flee Kailua prison
By Will Hoover and Karen Blakeman
Advertiser Staff Writers
Ten teenage girls escaped from a privately managed cottage at the Hawai'i Youth Correctional Facility yesterday in Kailua after they overpowered two guards, removed communication radios from the scene, unplugged the cottage phones and fled in a stolen state van.
The escape occurred at 12:33 p.m., said Sgt. Timmy Wong of the HPD District 4 station in Kailua. He said the girls were wearing blue prison uniforms at the time, but they may have changed clothes after the escape.
Wong said the 10 girls fled through the main gate in an unmarked white 1998 Ford Windstar van with license tag number GXT 744.
"They knew where the keys were kept," said Wong, who added that at least one of the women guards was bruised during the struggle.
Police said the keys were kept behind a door in the living room area of the cottage.
Two of the girls distracted one of the guards when one pretended to be sick and asked for an aspirin, authorities said. The other girls then overpowered a second guard.
Bert Matsuoka, executive director of the the state Office of Youth Services, said last night that management of the girls' cottage at the facility was turned over to Child and Family Service, a state-contracted provider, in mid-August.
The change was made so that the girls would receive "more gender-specific services," he said.
He said he wasn't sure how many guards usually watched the girls.
"We don't get involved with the details of the operation," he said.
The correctional facility has had escapes in the past, Matsuoka said, but never as many as this.
"Ten at once is a very unusual circumstance," he said.
Last May, three teenage girls stole a state-owned car at the facility and tried to drive away, but that attempt was foiled when corrections officers blocked the road.
Wong, the police sergeant, said two of the girls are 14, two are 17 and the rest are 16. The shortest is 5 feet tall, the tallest 5 feet 5, and they range from 110 to 150 pounds. Because the girls are under age, Wong said he could not release their names or photographs.
Reach Karen Blakeman at 535-2340 or at kblakeman@honoluluadvertiser.com.
