Posted on: Friday, May 23, 2003
Police Beat
Driver arrested in motorcycle incident
Police arrested a 29-year-old man yesterday in an apparent road-rage case and released him in the afternoon pending further investigation.
Two people told police that a driver struck their motorcycle several times on H-1 Freeway near the Tripler off ramp late Tuesday.
The pair on the motorcycle — a 31-year-old man and 29-year-old woman — escaped serious injury.
They told police that a sedan struck their motorcycle from behind at 10:45 p.m., then clipped the motorcycle twice. They followed the car into the Salt Lake area and confronted the driver but he ran away, police said.
Singer prohibited from leaving state
District Judge Russel Nagata yesterday 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 Wednesday for permission to attend a one-year memorial service for his mother in San Francisco.
Prosecutors objected, saying 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 yesterday.
Nagata denied Toeaina's request yesterday, 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, saying that 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 in court by an attorney.
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.
"There's only two ways these things can come in — through deliveries or staff giving them things they shouldn't," Frank said.
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.
