Newswatch

By Star-Bulletin Staff

Tuesday, April 29, 1997

No Campus Center
dining until fall

Several thousand University of Hawaii-Manoa students will have to find somewhere else to eat until the fall semester after fire damaged the Campus Center cafe.

Closure of the cafe, as well as the Taco Bell and Pizza Hut stands a floor below, will result in a $10,000 loss in revenue per day for Marriott Education Services, which operates the on-campus food concessions, said Ralph Nakamoto, Marriott food service director.

Marriott serves an average 3,500 people a day at those restaurants. About $50,000 in food in the kitchen was destroyed by the blaze, Nakamoto added.

Honolulu fire and police investigators today were still assessing damage from yesterday's early-morning blaze that destroyed much of the kitchen contents of the Ka Hea Ai Cafe.

"I think we've determined that it was purposely set as an incendiary fire," fire Capt. Glenn Solem. He said "damage in the kitchen area by the dishwashing is pretty much a total loss. The one main reefer, a total loss. The back room, pretty much a total loss and would have to be gutted," Solem said. "It'll take quite a while before they get back into operation, I believe."

Detective Steve Whiting of the Criminal Investigation Division said police are looking at the three areas where the fire started. Two of the sources were located in the second-floor kitchen while the third was in an access hallway behind the fast-food stands and the UH Game Room, all of which suffered heavy water damage.

Fund transfer suggested
to make up A+ cut

A co-chairman of the Senate Education Committee says the governor can transfer funds to make up for a $7 million cut in the A+ after-school program.

Sen. Rod Tam, committee co-chairman, said the money should come from $20 million in federal impact funding given to the state for educating students from military families.

Tam said the federal money is earmarked for education spending and was used to start the A+ program. But most years the money has been put into the general fund, he said. "This way parents don't have to pay more," Tam said.

Rep. David Stegmaier, chairman of the House Education Committee, said the Department of Education would see a budget cut of $10.1 million next fiscal year, about 1.4 percent less than what the administration had requested. That's significantly less than other departments such as Human Services, which would suffer a 6.8 percent cut, Stegmaier said.

Stegmaier said he would leave it up to the governor to decide where to find the money.

Kathleen Racuya-Markrich, spokeswoman for Gov. Ben Cayetano, said it was too soon to say where the governor would find the extra funding.

Girl, 12, describes
fondling by teacher

A poised 12-year-old girl remembers the moment in 1994 when a routine hug from a teacher who opened his classroom during recess and offered candy to students ended with two of his fingers in her back pocket.

"He gradually rubbed his way down and put his fingers in my pants pocket," the girl said yesterday before Circuit Court jurors in the sexual-assault trial of Lawrence J. Norton.

"I could feel them rubbing."

The state has accused Norton, a former Mokapu Elementary fourth-grade teacher, of allegedly touching two students three times on their buttocks in 1994 and 1995 in his classroom.

Todd Eddins, deputy public defender, said Norton, 57, touched his students only in positive ways and believed in the therapeutic power of hugs.

Jurors will not hear about Norton's previous sexual-assault conviction or sex-offender treatment.

Norton pleaded no contest in December 1995 to third-

degree sexual assault, but didn't admit to specific offenses.

Calif. man in drug ring
sentenced to 30 years

A 45-year-old California man convicted of helping to bring more than 12 pounds of raw methamphetamine into Hawaii a year ago will spend the next 30 years in prison.

U.S. District Judge David Ezra yesterday sentenced Carl Serrano to 360 months in prison from a range of 292 to 365 months.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Lou Bracco said the government had asked for the maximum sentence for Serrano, citing numerous prior felony drug convictions.

A federal jury convicted Serrano and Robert Martinez, 60, of conspiring to possess and distribute the drug and for their assistance in bringing the drug into the state.

Martinez, a Hawaii resident, in February was sentenced to life in prison. He had more than five felony drug convictions, Bracco said.

In the April 1996 incident, authorities arrested Crystal York at Honolulu Airport for allegedly hiding more than 12 pounds of methamphetamine around her waist. York, 20, pleaded guilty, cooperated with authorities and was sentenced to three years in prison.

See expanded coverage in today's Honolulu Star-Bulletin.
See our [Info] section for subscription information.

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Police/Fire


By Star-Bulletin staff

Maili man faces charges
in shooting death

Charges are expected to be filed today against a 47-year-old Maili man accused in the Sunday shooting death of David Eli, 24, police said.

The man allegedly shot and killed Eli and wounded two other men when he burst into a Holopono Street home looking for his ex-girlfriend Cheryl Botelho, police said.

Eli died at 7:28 p.m. Sunday in Queen's Hospital after the shootings at about 6 p.m.

Timothy Calderon, 53, and Cheryl Botelho's brother, Ronald Botelho, 43, were wounded. Calderon is in guarded condition with a chest wound in Queen's Hospital. Ronald Botelho is satisfactory in Kapiolani Hospital at Pali Momi with a gunshot wound in the left forearm.

Aiea woman, 79, dies
after being hit by car

A 79-year-old Aiea woman died after she was struck by a car at 5:45 p.m. yesterday on Komo Mai Drive in Waiau.

With a cut to the left side of her head and both of her lower legs broken, she was taken to Kapiolani Hospital at Pali Momi in critical condition.

She died there while being treated in the trauma room at 6:45.

She was struck while crossing south on Komo Mai about 366 feet east of Kaahumanu Street by a westbound 1997 Toyota driven by an Aiea man, 27, police said. She was not in a crosswalk, police said.

Three masked men rob
pair in Haleiwa home

Three masked men broke into a Haleiwa home last night and robbed two male residents at gunpoint after tying them up with duct tape.

The suspects fled with an undetermined amount of cash, a camera, and a rifle, police said. The residents, 46 and 52, were not harmed.

They apparently were watching TV when just before 8 p.m. three men wearing ski masks broke into their home at 62-202 Kamehameha Highway.

Two of them were armed -- one with a sawed-off shotgun, the other with a handgun, the residents told police.

Other Police/Fire headlines
in today’s Star-Bulletin:

• Charges sought in kidnapping case
  
• ‘Coffee shack’ burns in South Kona
  
• Police officer honored for life-saving

See expanded coverage in today's Honolulu Star-Bulletin.
See our [Info] section for subscription information.