Police tighten dragnet above Hau'ula
By Walter Wright
Advertiser Staff Writer
HAU'ULA — After detecting possible images of humans in the mountains behind this coastal community, police yesterday tightened their perimeter in a "needle-in-a-haystack search" for three escapees from the high-security Halawa prison.
Deborah Booker • The Honolulu Advertiser
Police said an infrared heat-detecting scope mounted on a helicopter showed "some movement" in the valley before daybreak yesterday. The figures appeared to be walking upright about 1 1.2 miles mauka of Kamehameha Highway and that led police to believe they were not wild pigs and there appeared to be more than one of them, Lt. Bill Kato said.
Police block a Hau'ula roadway off Kamehameha Highway in the area where their manhunt continues for three Halawa prisoners who escaped Friday.
"Who else would be up there in the middle of the night?" Kato asked. "We're not 100 percent sure that it's them.
"We need to go in and find out who it is."
Kato said he believes that the suspects are more likely to be in the Hau'ula valley area than anywhere else on O'ahu because of the credibility of an eyewitness who saw three men in the hills Sunday, and because there is no reliable information from the public placing them anywhere else on the island. Detectives have checked out tips from other areas and none has led to the escapees, Kato said.
"Generally, we're not getting many CrimeStoppers tips from elsewhere, and the person who saw men up here is very credible," he said.
He said the police helicopter is using a loudspeaker to ask anyone in the forest to show themselves, and he says he thinks that anyone other than those trying to hide would come out and make themselves known.
Albert Batalona, 27, Warren Elicker, 25, and David Scribner, 20, escaped Friday from the Halawa facility. They are considered to be armed and dangerous.
Kato said the Honolulu Police Department would continue to press its search today as it did yesterday, sending heavily armed squads of police officers through the dense brush, into ravines and over ridges.
Albert Batalona
Warren Elicker
David Scribner
Kato also issued a plea to the public, especially hunters and hikers, to stay out of the area. As a precaution, the state yesterday closed the Hau'ula Loop Trail, Kaipapa'u Forest Reserve and the Ma'ahua Loop Trail until further notice.
"We have police officers up there, and they are armed," he said.
The search in the valley enters its fourth day today.
"We have to press forward and find out who's up there," Kato said. Officers who have been up in mountains report that it's steep, cold, windy, rainy. "So it would be a stretch for them to stay up there very long," he said.
Kato said HPD is being assisted by the Sheriff's Department, attorney general's office, and the Department of Land and Natural Resources.
Batalona was serving a sentence of life without the possibility of parole for the 1999 takeover robbery at the Kahala branch of American Savings Bank.
Batalona fired an automatic assault rifle at a police officer during the robbery.
Elicker was sentenced to two consecutive 20-year terms and was not eligible for parole for at least 26 years and eight months. His sentence includes a 2001 home-invasion robbery of a Punalu'u couple.
Scribner was serving a 10-year sentence for an October 2002 robbery and escape convictions.
State Public Safety Director James Propotnick has said the escapees apparently broke undetected into a cavity in a wall between two cells and descended into a basement. They walked out a door and squeezed through the space between two 16-foot-tall chained and padlocked gates 30 yards away. The gates were next to an unmanned guard shack and in view of a guard tower.
An investigation of the escape will take at least a month, Propotnick said.
Staff writer Curtis Lum contributed to this report.
