The drunken driver of a speeding pickup truck that plowed through a crowd of pedestrians and struck another truck in Kakaako has begun serving a 30-year sentence at Halawa Correctional Facility.
Oahu Circuit Judge Trish Morikawa sentenced Alins Sumang on Thursday according to the terms of a plea agreement he entered into in March with prosecutors.
But the 29-year-old could serve as little as eight years and four months for the deaths of three people and injury to four others, and may be credited for time served.
The decision as to whether Sumang will serve the full 30 years lies with the Hawaii Paroling Authority board.
Prosecutors will ask for the full 30-year sentence when the matter goes before the board, said Matt Dvonch, spokesman for the Honolulu Prosecutor’s Office.
Sumang was sentenced to 20 years’ imprisonment for each of the three counts of manslaughter, the sentences to run concurrently, for the deaths of the three pedestrians: Travis Lau, 39, of Honolulu; Casimir Pokorny, 26, of Pennsylvania; and Reino Ikeda, 47, of Japan.
Sumang reeked of alcohol and had a half-empty bottle of vodka on the floorboard of his Ford F-150 when he was arrested, police said.
By state statute the mandatory minimum for the manslaughter case is six years and eight months.
Sumang was also sentenced to five years for each of four counts of second-degree assault in injuring the three pedestrians and one motorist, which also will run together. That sentence has a mandatory minimum of one year and eight months.
In the plea agreement, Sumang also agreed to a five-year sentence for probation revocation in a 2016 terroristic threatening case, to which he pleaded no contest to threatening a neighbor with a knife.
Probation revocation has no mandatory minimum; that will be set by the board, Dvonch said.
The 30 years is calculated by the 20-year manslaughter sentence running back to back with the five-year sentence for the assaults and five years for the probation revocation.
Sumang read a letter of apology in the courtroom Thursday, The Associated Press reported: “I know I don’t deserve to ask for this, but please forgive me for my actions that day. And if it’s not possible, just know that I’m truly sorry for every minute of that day. Not a day goes by that I wish I could trade places with them and turn back the hands of time,” Sumang said.
“We didn’t believe him,” Dr. William Lau told the
Honolulu Star-Advertiser.
His son, Travis Lau, was one of the pedestrians killed while standing at a traffic island on Ala Moana Boulevard. “It just sounded like a jailhouse confession. We didn’t put very much faith or value into what he said.”
Lau said he and his family think anything less than the maximum 30 years is inadequate.
“We requested the court to consider consecutive instead of concurrent sentencing,” he said. “Yesterday we understood there is (also) an extended-sentence provision, as we understand it.”
After the plea deal in March, Honolulu Prosecutor Steve Alm told the Star-Advertiser that in state court a judge can participate in plea discussions and enter into a binding plea agreement, including the sentencing, which Morikawa did.
That is the only way to guarantee a consecutive sentence — not by a trial or by merely pleading guilty to the charges, in which case it would be totally up to the judge, he said.
Some of the families of the deceased and surviving victims are suing Sumang, the city and a police officer who is alleged to have contributed to the injuries by his acts and omissions during what witnesses said was a high-speed pursuit of Sumang in areas crowded with pedestrians from Keeaumoku Street to Ala Moana Boulevard and Kamakee Street, and hitting another truck.
