Deputy Public Defender Christian Enright told jurors Thursday that the 23-year-old Waikiki man on trial for second-degree murder in the 2021 fatal stabbing of a 19-year-old California visitor at Kuhio Beach was simply defending himself and blames the death on a visiting nurse who administered CPR.
Enright said that Oscar Cardona Jr., who has worn thick glasses since he was 5, plays Pokemon and lived with his mom until a few months before Elian Delacerda died, “didn’t stab anyone. He used the knife to defend himself.”
But Cardona may have hurt himself during cross-examination Wednesday.
“I wasn’t stabbing him, I was just protecting myself,” he said. “I was just holding it,” demonstrating what he did with his knife by holding a pen waist high.
“He came attacking me so, maybe he did it to himself. He probably ran into it.”
A Circuit Court jury began deliberations Thursday, and must decide whether to accept the self-defense argument or find Cardona guilty of murder in the stabbing that occurred at 12:40 a.m. June 1, 2021, in the area of Kalakaua and Ohua avenues. If they cannot unanimously find him guilty of second-degree murder, they can select from lesser offenses including manslaughter, different levels of assault and reckless endangering.
Deputy Prosecutor Franklin Pacarro said Cardona didn’t proclaim self-defense when he watched himself in the state’s videos of the incident, and doesn’t say: “Yes that was me. I killed him because he was trying to kill me.”
He said self-defense requires an immediate necessity to use deadly force, but one first has the duty to retreat if possible before using deadly force. In this case, Pacarro said he could have called 911 or ran or rode his bike to the nearby police substation.
But Cardona “wasn’t a puppy dog with his tail between his legs,” Pacarro said.
Instead he brought his gold knife, which he carried in his rented electric bike’s pouch, when roommate Elijah Horn called for help during a confrontation with Delacerda and Osvaldo Castaneda-Pena, who were visiting from Vacaville, Calif., he said.
Horn, a soft-spoken Black man with a slight build, testified he called his friend and roommate Cardona because “I was scared. I wanted to call someone I knew I could trust to be with me.”
He was meeting “a girl and her friends, complete strangers to me,” Horn testified.
They met at some tables near the beach, shortly before one of the young men came up and asked if they wanted shots. He asked what kind? Then one of the men began calling him names, including the “N” word and other names, so he phoned Cardona.
Horn said he told detectives he called Cardona because “I didn’t want to look like a pipsqueak.”
Pacarro said that when Cardona arrived, he pulled out the knife, but didn’t even know whether the guys were harassing the girls. He noted that the video showed the girls swearing at Delacerda, and didn’t look like they needed help.
Pacarro questioned Enright’s “blaming the nurse.” He reminded the jury that Honolulu Chief Medical Examiner Masahiko Kobayashi, who performed the autopsy on Delacerda, determined the cause of death was “a stab wound to the chest, to the heart,” as he testified in court, and that it was one of five sharp-force injuries inflicted on him.
Cardona “struck Mr. Delacerda in the shoulder so hard that (the 3-inch blade) went out the other end. …This is evidence of intent.”
He was the only one armed, Pacarro said, except for a young woman who hit one of the men with a skateboard.
Enright said Cardona was just trying to defuse the situation and didn’t want to fight.
He likened Cardona to a puffer fish, trying to puff up to scare a predator away.
Cardona showed them the knife, but “they were predators” and weren’t deterred by it.
Enright said they were here to party, drink, wreak havoc, look for victims and were drunk.
They “zeroed in on their victims,” and said the most violent thing he could say.
“Elian gets in Elijah’s face and hits him hard,” Enright said.
Cardona testified “the big guy,” Castaneda-Pena, punched him in the cheek, and his glasses broke and came off.
“I tried to fight back, but it was very hard for me to see what was going on,” he said.
Enright produced the pair of broken glasses as an exhibit, saying they are “his crutches, his wheelchair, his lifeline.”
He told the jury the nurse was drunk and panicked and hurt Delacerda by doing CPR when he was still breathing.
Pacarro said Cardona never reported the incident to police. Instead, he leaves just before police arrive, goes home, places the knife in his safe, cleans up and calls Star Sutherland, who reports to police that he told her he stabbed a man multiple times.
“You call Star Sutherland because you wanted to speak to a mother figure,” Pacarro asked.
“Yes,” Cardona replied.
“Why not call your mother?” he asks.
“I was afraid of what she was going to say and think of me,” Cardona said.
Jurors were not told the state alleges that on June 1, 2021, the day of the stabbing, Cardona possessed cocaine, a felony, and marijuana, a petty misdemeanor. He was charged July 14 with drug possession.
(Reporters were not permitted in the courtroom since there was no room because of spacing requirements of jurors due to COVID-19 protocols, so reporting was done by Zoom. Judge Kevin Morikone’s court had only one camera angle, so videos shown to the jury were not visible through Zoom.)
