A man indicted in the Feb. 16 attack in Laie that left a police officer with critical head injuries was found mentally fit Monday to proceed to trial on charges of first-degree attempted murder of a law enforcement
officer.
Circuit Judge Ronald Johnson considered the findings by a three-member panel of psychologists and found that Hokuokalani Patoc is able to understand the proceedings against him, able to assist in his own defense and has
sufficient ability to consult with his counsel with a reasonable degree of rational understanding.
The court had ordered
a fitness determination in July.
Patoc is also charged with first-degree unauthorized control of a motor
vehicle for allegedly stealing the officer’s subsidized vehicle and second-degree resisting an order to stop a motor vehicle.
He is being held at the Oahu Community Correctional Center in lieu of
$1 million bail.
His new trial week is set to begin Dec. 25 before Judge Paul Wong.
Court documents show that police responded to a road rage incident just before 5 a.m. Feb. 16 in Laie. Police found a man standing next to a Toyota 4Runner parked in the middle of Iosepa Street holding a foot-long metal tool and impeding vehicular traffic.
The driver allegedly struck police officer Nakia Newton twice in the back of the head with the tool, then fled in the officer’s subsidized vehicle, a Ford Explorer, with the blue lights on. Police recovered a white car jack stand extension nearby.
Newton was found on the ground, unresponsive in a pool of blood.
The stolen vehicle was seen on Kamehameha
Highway along the North Shore and in Wahiawa before heading south on the H-2 freeway.
Officers followed the vehicle, which went through downtown Honolulu and stopped in front of Iolani Palace. Officers arrested
Patoc at about 7 a.m.
Newton suffered skull fractures, bleeding to the brain and a laceration to the scalp. He was taken in critical condition to a hospital and was later released.
Patoc’s ex-wife filed a petition for a protective order against him to protect herself and their four children. She said that on Feb. 9, seven days before the attack on the police officer, her two teenage daughters said Patoc told them “something is following them, the car was talking to him.”
She said the girls went into their rooms at his home for safety, and woke up to the home in disarray because he was looking for something not there.
The ex-wife said one of their daughters expressed concerns to her teachers
at school about what happened, which resulted
in school officials being alerted and concerned for the safety of other students and their children.
