Illness cited in prison escape
By David Waite
Advertiser Courts Writer
Albert Batalona, one of three prison inmates who escaped from the state's Halawa Correctional Facility in April, told a Circuit Court jury yesterday that he had suffered from a digestive disorder inside the prison and feared that he was terminally ill.
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Batalona is serving a life sentence without parole for shooting at a police officer following a July 1999 bank robbery. He said he has suffered from chronic constipation followed by fits of diarrhea throughout his stay in the prison and didn't feel he was getting adequate treatment.
Albert Batalona escaped from the Halawa Correctional Facility together with two other inmates April 4.
Batalona said he weighed nearly 200 pounds in October 2000, but by the time he and two other men chipped away the grout and removed the concrete blocks in the rear of their prison cells, his weight was just over 130 pounds.
"My term is a death sentence," Batalona said after taking the stand in his own defense yesterday. "Life without parole is a death sentence in Halawa," Batalona said.
Batalona, 27, David Scribner, 20, and Warren Elicker, 25, crawled through the escape holes, slid down a knotted sheet into a utility corridor, broke through a door and left via the prison's unmanned main gate sometime before 4 a.m.
The three men were captured separately six days later in Windward O'ahu.
Batalona is being tried on one count of second-degree escape and two counts of second-degree robbery for allegedly stealing a car and a cell phone from two men at Stadium Mall shortly after the trio broke out.
Elicker is being tried on a charge of second-degree escape. Scribner, 20, pleaded no contest to robbery and escape charges in June and was sentenced in August by Circuit Judge Marie Milks to 20 years in prison.
Batalona yesterday denied that he pretended to have a knife or a gun under his shirt during the Stadium Mall incident.
He said the trio ended up in the mountains above Hau'ula because Scribner, who was driving the car that was taken from Stadium Mall, "didn't know where he was going."
Batalona said the three men took a supply of beef jerky and granola bars with them and foraged for food such as lilikoi, guavas, bananas and berries in the mountains where they were hiding.
He said the three drank water from mountain streams, which he said, "gave me the runs."
He denied that the three men had spent months planning the escape.
"I knew about it maybe a week and a half or two weeks in advance," Batalona said.
He said he was familiar with Hau'ula Valley, having hunted for pigs there.
The three were able to evade law enforcement officers for another five days. Then they walked out of the valley and separated. Each were captured hours later.
The trial resumes tomorrow when Elicker is expected to take the stand.
Reach David Waite at 525-8030 or at dwaite@honoluluadvertiser.com.
