Aki tape tells grisly details
By David Waite
Advertiser Courts Writer
A Circuit Court jury spent the morning yesterday watching a videotape of murder defendant Christopher Aki telling police he thinks two of his friends killed Kahealani "Kahea" Indreginal and spent the afternoon watching Aki in a second videotape confess to the crime.
The second tape was made late at night on Dec. 14, 2002, four days after the 11-year-old girl had gone missing from her family's home in the Halawa public housing complex.
AKI
Shortly into the interview with police detectives Sheryl Sunia and Cliff Rubio, Aki acknowledges that he fabricated a story he gave them the previous day in which he implicated two of his friends in the girl's disappearance and death.
And this time he admits he killed the girl, weeping throughout the interview.
Aki, 21, former boyfriend of Kahealani's older half-sister Tanya, is accused of slaying the sixth-grader. Her disappearance from the Pu'uwai Momi public housing in Halawa where she lived triggered a massive search. Her body was found three days later on Dec. 13, 2002, off the 'Aiea Loop Trail.
City Prosecutor Peter Carlisle said at the start of the trial that Aki beat the girl to death with a pipe a day after smoking crystal methamphetamine. But Aki's lawyer, state Public Defender Todd Eddins, claims Aki falsely confessed because the real killer, one of the girl's uncles, threatened to kill Aki and his family if he told the truth about what happened.
In the second videotaped interview played for the jury yesterday, Aki admitted he picked up the girl by a manapua truck after she got off a school bus near her home and that he drove her to the 'Aiea McDonalds restaurant drive-through to get something to eat.
Aki said the girl had told him she had never been to a heiau, so he took her to a state park above 'Aiea Heights.
He said the two were eating, talking and giggling when he accidentally spit and it landed on the girl's face, near her mouth, and that Kahea slapped him.
"I punched her out cold. I snapped, I just lost it," Aki said.
He told detectives he got scared and dragged the girl out of his car.
"Then I just hit her with a pole," Aki said, a reference to what prosecutor's say was pipe. "I poked her and I just whacked her till I didn't see her move."
He said he left the girl on the ground near his car and got back into his car. When he got back out, he noticed the girl had moved. He told the detectives that he jumped out of his car, grabbed the girl, pulled her to the edge of the hill and threw her down the slope.
"She's — she's making noises. I hit her," Aki said.
He said he continued to beat the girl with the pipe, and at one point, she said his name.
"Then I hit her in the neck."
Aki said he could hear the girl breathing, so he continued to hit her.
"The last time I was hitting her head, then she was — I poked her in her side. That's when I was trying to check if she was breathing," Aki said.
He said he went back to his car, threw the pole on the floor near the front passenger seat, got some water out of the trunk and sat in the driver's seat as he washed his hands with the door open so the water would fall on the ground outside the car.
He said he waited 10 minutes and went back to where the girl was. She had managed to get to a sitting position.
"I go back to my car to get the pole again," he said.
Aki told the detectives that as he approached the girl she turned and told him, "Stop it Chris."
"When I heard — when she said 'Stop it Chris,' that's when I just lost it again, I just got scared again. I didn't want no one to hear me — hear her," Aki said.
He said he hit her nine more times with the pole, ran back to the car and threw it on the floor in the back.
"And then I left," he said.
He said he threw the pole into Halawa Stream near the Makalapa Gate to Pearl Harbor. A subsequent search by divers failed to turn up the weapon.
Aki said he went back to the park in the early morning and saw the girl's body.
"I touched her and she was hard, so I knew she passed away over night," he said.
He told the two detectives he wanted to "tell everybody ... I knew where she was" but couldn't because he was scared.
Aki said his worst fear was not seeing his girlfriend again or their son and perhaps not seeing his mother again.
He said he made up the story he told police the previous day — about two men stealing the girl's bracelets and killing her so she couldn't report the robbery or identify those involved — because he "didn't want my mom them think it was me" who killed the girl.
In the videotape the jury heard yesterday morning, Aki told detectives the girl got into his car and they drove to a park near 'Aiea High School where two men he knew had parked their truck.
He said one of the men slammed the girl's head into a rock wall knocking her out.
He said the men drove the girl in their truck to the state park above 'Aiea Heights where they stole her gold bracelets and dumped her body.
Aki said the men threatened to kill him and his family if he went to authorities.
The trial is scheduled to resume Tuesday.
Reach David Waite at dwaite@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8030.
