Inmate caught after ditching work party
A 23-year-old state inmate who failed to show up for his scheduled pickup in a work furlough program was found intoxicated Friday night at a Waipahu park.
Martha Torney, deputy director of the Department of Public Safety, said Saturday that the man failed to show up for his scheduled 7:45 p.m. pickup at Patsy T. Mink Central Oahu Regional Park.
A decision was made to return the other inmates to Waiawa Correctional Facility, then send out two adult correctional officers to look for him.
The inmate was later found intoxicated by police and was taken to Pali Momi Medical Center.
According to dispatch reports, the man had alcohol on his breath, his speech was slurred and he was vomiting. He admitted to drinking alcohol, but didn’t say how much. He was back at the Waiawa facility at 11:52 p.m., Torney said.
Wrong-way bicyclist hit by pickup truck
A 31-year-old bicyclist was taken to the hospital in stable condition Friday after he was hit while traveling the wrong way on South Beretania Street.
The crash happened about 7 p.m., Ewa of Hale Makai Street, near the main police station.
Police said the cyclist was traveling against oncoming traffic on the one-way street when an off-duty police officer hit him on the left side of the road. The crash snapped off the left-side mirror of the officer’s black Ford pickup, his personal vehicle.
The glare from the setting sun might have been a factor in the collision, police said.
Officers planned to cite the man for operating a vehicle in the wrong direction on a one-way roadway.
Man charged with child’s sexual assault
A 36-year-old Waipahu man made an initial appearance Friday in District Court on several charges of sexually assaulting a girl.
Randy Nalu Nunies Jr. of Paioa Place was charged with two counts of first-degree sexual assault and continuous sexual assault of a minor, class A felonies punishable by up to 20 years in prison. He was also charged with six counts of third-degree sexual assault.
He was being held in lieu of $75,000 bail Friday night at Oahu Community Correctional Center.
Police arrested Nunies at his home Wednesday about 8:40 a.m.
Blaze breaks out at boarding house
Fire damaged a room in a two-story boarding house Saturday morning in Kalihi.
Firefighters responded to the 8:59 a.m. blaze on the first floor of the wooden structure on Kamehameha IV Road, just makai of School Street, and extinguished it by 9:20, said Capt. Robert Main, Honolulu Fire Department spokesman.
Estimated damage was $18,000 to the structure and $2,000 to its contents, Main said. The cause and origin of the fire were still under investigation but it was believed to have started in the cooking area of a one-room unit on the first floor, he said.
A man living in the unit was not home. Three other people living on the second floor escaped without injury. Main credited a smoke detector on the first floor for alerting those home about the fire.
