Escapees jailed 10 more years
By David Waite
Advertiser Staff Writer
A state judge yesterday sentenced two men who escaped from Halawa prison to 10 additional years behind bars and also ordered Albert Batalona and Warren Elicker to each pay more than $91,000, primarily to cover overtime costs associated with the six-day manhunt.
Batalona, Elicker and a third inmate, David Scribner, scraped away the grout between the concrete blocks toward the back of their prison cells and on April 4 slid down knotted bed sheets into a utility corridor below. From there, they were able to force open a door that led to the outside and left via the prison's main gate, which was not staffed at the time of the escape.
The three men drove a car taken from Stadium Mall to Hau'ula Valley, where they were able to evade capture for the next six days as police maintained around-the-clock surveillance of the Windward area and flew over trails and ridges with the police helicopter.
The three were arrested separately at various Windward O'ahu locations within hours of walking out of the valley on the morning of April 10.
Circuit Judge Marie Milks yesterday granted a prosecution request to extend the usual five-year sentence for escape to 10 years for Batalona and Elicker. Batalona also was sentenced to an additional 10 years — instead of the usual five years — for stealing a cell phone from two men whose car was taken from Stadium Mall.
Batalona, 27, is already serving a life-without-parole sentence that Milks imposed for the attempted murder of a police officer during the July 1999 gunbattle and robbery of the Kahala branch of American Savings Bank. Milks said Batalona may serve the two new sentences concurrently with the life term.
Elicker, 25, had just begun serving a minimum term of 13 years and four months on an armed robbery conviction at the time of his escape and must finish serving that sentence before he begins the 10-year term for escape, Milks ordered.
Scribner, 20, pleaded no contest to robbery and escape charges in June and was sentenced in August by Milks to 20 years in prison.
Batalona tried to convince Milks that he was not a danger to the community and said that she need not extend his prison sentences to 10 years on each of the two counts.
"When we were out there, no one got hurt," Batalona said.
"I was on the bus with other people," Batalona said of his last-ditch efforts to avoid capture. "If I meant to hurt anybody, I sure wouldn't have jumped on the bus."
Elicker also told Milks he did not harm and never intended to harm anyone during the escape. He said that he is already being punished substantially for the escape and that extending the five-year term to 10 years for escape wasn't necessary.
"I'll be in special holding for two years before I even get a chance to get back to the high (security) facility for another five or six years," Elicker said.
Milks said that although no one was physically injured during the escape, the two men from whom the car was taken at Stadium Mall were traumatized.
She told Batalona that the jury had rejected his "issues about conditions at prison" as justification for his escape.
"The public needs to feel, Mr. Batalona, that they are safe from you, that they are protected from you," Milks said.
Reach David Waite at dwaite@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8030.
