Police conduct manhunt for 3 Halawa escapees
| • | Escapee has long history of trouble |
By Curtis Lum and Karen Blakeman
Advertiser Staff Writers
More than 100 Honolulu police officers and state sheriffs conducted an islandwide manhunt through the night for three men who broke out of the high-security Halawa Correctional Facility yesterday morning.
The breakout is considered rare for the facility which holds more than 160 inmates and has not had an escape since the 1980s.
BATALONA
SCRIBNER
Albert Batalona, 27, Warren Elicker, 25, and David Scribner, 20, escaped sometime between 1:30 and 3:30 a.m. yesterday in what prison officials called a "well-planned and well-orchestrated" breakout. All three men are considered armed and dangerous.
Batalona is the most well known because of his criminal history. He was convicted of the July 1999 robbery of the Kahala branch of American Savings Bank. Batalona fired a fully automatic AR-15 assault rifle at a police officer during the robbery and was sentenced to life in prison without parole in October 2000.
Elicker was serving a 20-year sentence for a 2001 home-invasion robbery of a Punalu'u couple. He has 13 felony convictions, including robbery, kidnapping, auto theft and burglary.
Police described the two as volatile because both were involved in separate armed robberies that put people at risk or injured them.
Scribner has seven felony convictions dating back to April 2002. He was serving a 10-year sentence for an October 2002 robbery and escape convictions.
Prisons officials yesterday declined to release details of the escape.
The prison was placed in lockdown after the escape, and officials launched an internal investigation, said interim Public Safety director James Propotnick.
After they left prison grounds, the escapees are suspected of stealing a car from a woman at the Stadium Mall at about 3:30 a.m. Police recovered the car at the Hau'ula Kai Shopping Center in Windward O'ahu shortly before 8 a.m.
Power outages reported on parts of the island Thursday night and early yesterday morning played no role in the escape, said Halawa warden Nolan Espinda.
Prison officials found a letter in Batalona's cell that was addressed to them and the Hawai'i Paroling Authority. The authority sets the minimum number of years a prisoner must spend before being eligible for parole.
In the letter, Batalona said he didn't realize how precious freedom was until he lost it, said Paroling Authority administrator Tommy Johnson. Batalona also wrote that he was upset at comments made by then-parole board member Lani Rae Garcia that Batalona would spend the rest of his adult life in prison.
Johnson said Garcia had "merely stated the obvious" because Batalona was sentenced by Circuit Judge Marie Milks to the mandatory term of life without the possibility of parole. Johnson said he wasn't sure why Batalona would single out Garcia because the 2001 hearing had not been argumentative or contentious. Batalona can request that the governor commute his sentence to life in prison with parole after 20 years.
To get out of the prison yard, the men had to get past a 16-foot fence topped with razor wire, the warden said. The yard was also guarded, but none of the guards remembered seeing anything unusual.
A full shift of one dozen guards was on midnight watch, Espinda said, supervising 162 inmates.
Although the cells were designed to hold one person, Scribner and Elicker were kept in a ground floor cell together because the prison had 72 more inmates than it was designed to hold. Batalona was held in the cell next door.
Each cell is 8 feet by 10 feet and constructed of concrete, Espinda said. They contain stainless steel beds and each is equipped with a toilet and sink. A small window in each cell is not big enough to accommodate a man's body, and neither window had been tampered with, Espinda said.
He said the cell doors were shut and locked and remained secured.
Espinda said work would be necessary to repair the breaches that contributed to the escape, and that structural problems with the building itself would require attention.
At 1:30 a.m., guards in Cell Module C, where the men were held, did a bed check known as a "flesh count," Espinda said. A flesh count requires that the guard see a portion of the inmate's body, not just a lump under a blanket. The 1:30 a.m. count showed nobody missing, he said. The 4 a.m. count showed three prisoners missing.
Espinda said that an inmate escaped from the Halawa medium security facility in 1989.
In 1981, one inmate escaped from Halawa. He was captured more than four months later. Also in 1981, a prisoner escaped, but was caught about three hours later. In 1983, another prisoner was captured minutes after he jumped over a Halawa fence.
In May 2002, Scribner was involved in an escape from the O'ahu Community Correctional Center. He was convicted of attacking a cook to divert guards' attention while another inmate escaped.
Staff writer Rod Ohira contributed to this report.
