Police Beat
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Car hits couple on motorcycle
Police have opened a first-degree attempted murder investigation into a couple's complaint that a car hit their motorcycle several times last night in the eastbound lanes of the H-1 Freeway near Tripler Army Medical Center. A man, 31, and woman, 29, on the motorcycle escaped serious injury, police said.
They told police a sedan hit their motorcycle from behind at 10:45 p.m. The driver of the car twice clipped the motorcycle as the riders pursued the car. The driver of the car fled the scene in the Salt Lake area, police said.
Singer prohibited from leaving state
District Judge Russel Nagata today ordered Aziel Al Toeaina not to leave the state but declined to rule on a prosecutor's request to have the singer/songwriter give up his passport.
Toeaina, 25, is charged with attempted murder for allegedly shooting at Tupu Alualu last Friday in the parking lot of Ala Moana Center. Toeaina's preliminary hearing is June 5 but he asked the judge yesterday for permission to attend a one-year memorial service for his mother in San Francisco.
Prosecutors objected, saying that Toeaina who is free on $50,000 bail is a flight risk. Also, Toeaina had only a one-way ticket to the Mainland and had been ordered to produce a return-trip ticket in court today.
Nagata denied Toeaina's request today noting that records indicated his late mother had lived in Hawai'i and many of her relatives were Hawai'i residents.
Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Jean Ireton moved to have Toeaina's passport seized, stating that intelligence information indicated he was heading to New Zealand. Ireton told the court Toeaina is involved in gang and drug activity.
Nagata declined to rule on the passport issue because Toeaina was not represented by an attorney in court.
Sweep reveals inmate activities
A two-day sweep of three modules and the industrial, educational and recreational areas at Halawa Correctional Facility's medium-security prison uncovered some drugs and enterprising inmate activities, Warden Clayton Frank said.
More than a dozen tattoo machines and a cache of slippers were among the items seized. "It's interesting what they were doing for trade," Frank said. "There's only two ways these things can come in — through deliveries or staff giving them things they shouldn't."
Cigarette lighters smuggled into prison were used to convert hair cream into ink for the tattoo machines, the warden said.
Corrections officers, sheriff's deputies, state attorney general's investigators and Honolulu police conducted the shakedown.
