Hawaii State Hospital escapee Randall Saito fled hospital grounds after he opened a four-digit combination locked gate that led to the Windward Community College campus and his temporary freedom, according to a court document.
When deputy sheriffs nabbed Saito in Stockton, Calif., on Nov. 15, he had over $6,000 in cash, two fake driver’s licenses and two smartphones.
Details of his escape were revealed in court documents the state filed Thursday, asking to increase Saito’s bail “and/or require bail be posted in cash only and/or deny bail.”
In one of the documents, Deputy Attorney General Kory Young said Saito’s
escape involved “extensive planning and considerable financial resources.”
Saito, 59, was extradited Wednesday to Hawaii from California for a felony escape charge. His arraignment is set for Tuesday, and he remains in custody in lieu of $500,000 bail.
Saito fled the State Hospital on Nov. 12. A police affidavit indicated surveillance video footage reviewed by a detective showed Saito taping the locks of double doors in the Building B lounge shortly before
8:30 a.m. that day.
About an hour later the video showed Saito removing the tape from the door locks and walking to Building K to retrieve “what appeared to be a filled garbage bag from a combination locked cabinet,” according to the court document.
He returned to Building B and changed into clothing that was inside the bag. Video footage then showed Saito walking to a dumpster near the same building and discarding the bag filled with the clothes he previously wore.
At about 10:03 a.m. Saito was observed opening the four-digit combination locked gate that leads to Windward Community College.
A hospital staff employee discovered him missing at about 7:36 p.m. that night.
The court document said Saito used the alias Randall Suzuki when he arranged a charter flight on Royal Pacific Air to Maui from Oahu. He told personnel at the charter that he was arranging a flight for a man named Alvin Pimento, another alias Saito used.
He paid $1,455.35 in cash for the charter and flew under the alias Alvin Pimento. Sometime after he arrived on Maui, Saito boarded a
Hawaiian Airlines flight to San Jose, Calif., using the same alias.
Deputy sheriffs nabbed Saito in Stockton after they received a tip from a cab company. They found $6,382,18 in cash and two fraudulent driver’s licenses in his possession. One was a Washington state driver’s license card with the name Clayton Mugen Kawamoto, and the other was an Illinois driver’s license with the name Michael Pascua.
Young described the fraudulent cards that had Saito’s photo on them as “high-quality fakes.”
“A representative of the U.S. Marshals Service was able to point out how most fake licenses are unable to reproduce the holograms that appear on driver’s licenses, but that the fakes found in (Saito’s) possession contained convincing looking holograms,” the court document said.
Authorities did not find any form of identification with the alias Saito used to board the charter flight and commercial flight.
It’s presumed he used some form of fraudulent identification to pass Transportation Security Administration security screening at Kahului airport when he boarded a flight to San Jose.
The court document said it appeared Saito had a smartphone while he was on hospital grounds because he had called a taxicab company about 45 minutes before he fled the hospital.
It’s unclear how Saito obtained a cellphone, which State Hospital patients are prohibited from possessing. What’s clear, Young said in the court document, is that Saito was able to coordinate his escape while using a cellphone at the hospital.
Saito also had obtained a backpack sometime between fleeing the hospital and before a taxi picked him up at Kaneohe District Park. It’s unknown whether someone provided him the backpack or if he had hid it somewhere outside of hospital grounds.
