A Circuit Court jury deliberated less than four hours Friday before rejecting Kilani Derego’s elaborate alibi defense and finding him guilty of murder in the beating death of taxi driver Charlys Ty Tang.
Derego, 19, claimed he was having sex with his girlfriend in an apartment on Schofield Barracks at the time a passer-by found an unconscious and badly beaten Tang on the ground near his taxi in the Waipahu Times Super Market parking lot just after 1 a.m. May 1, 2010.
An ambulance took Tang to the Queen’s Medical Center, where he died hours later of head injuries. It was his 41st birthday.
Derego said he and his then-girlfriend Angelena Riverrain went to the Schofield Barracks apartment of Riverrain’s hanai sister, Mahealani Cluck, and Cluck’s fiance, Army soldier Rea’suon Walls, on the afternoon of April 30.
Riverrain testified she and Derego fell asleep in the apartment’s living room but that Derego woke her at about 1 a.m. to have sex. Cluck and Walls testified that Derego and Riverrain spent the entire evening of April 30 in the apartment until midmorning on May 1. They all testified they had a breakfast of pancakes and bacon together.
Riverrain said Derego used a laptop computer in the apartment.
Derego presented an 81⁄2-by-11-inch printout suggesting he posted a message on Facebook at 9:30 p.m. which said he was with Riverrain at Schofield.
"The only person who could authenticate the Facebook (entry) was the defendant, an admitted liar. And the entries, even if taken to be true, did not provide him an alibi for the specific time of the murder. So in fact he was done in by the Facebook entries of his girlfriend," said Scott Bell, deputy city prosecutor.
Riverrain posted a Facebook entry after she learned of Derego’s May 7, 2010, arrest that said she hopes Derego didn’t have anything to do with Tang’s murder.
Derego faces a mandatory life prison term with the opportunity for parole at sentencing in May. The Hawaii Paroling Authority will determine when Derego will be eligible for parole.
His co-defendant and childhood friend, Michael Robles, stood trial last year. Circuit Judge Dexter Del Rosario found him guilty of manslaughter and sentenced him to the maximum 20-year prison term.
Robles, 20, told police and testified in his own trial that it was Derego who did most of the beating of Tang.
