Missing man found
trying to crack
Maui bank vault

Police don't know how the
suspect entered the premises

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By Gary T. Kubota
gkubota@starbulletin.com

WAILUKU >> A man who was the subject of a missing person search in January was found in Lahaina, digging in a bank at night trying to break into a vault, police said.

Maui detectives have charged 32-year-old Franklin W. Gonzales with second-degree burglary. He was being held in lieu of $5,000 bail, pending his preliminary hearing today in Lahaina District Court.

Police Lt. Lenie Lawrence said, judging from the level of his sweat, Gonzales had been digging for a couple of hours with a sledgehammer and a chisel before his arrest Friday night.

Detectives found a six-inch square hole, two inches deep on a second-floor utility room directly above the vault.

"He never got to the rebars," Lawrence said.

Even if Gonzales had gotten through the reinforced concrete, Lawrence said, he still would have had to break through the steel encasing the vault.

Officers were dispatched to the Lahaina branch of Bank of Hawaii at 11:06 p.m. Friday, after receiving a call from a security company that the alarm had gone off in the vault.

Officers saw no sign of forced entry, but heard a pounding sound inside the bank.

Gonzales was found in a utility room with a sledgehammer, chisel and walkie-talkie, according to police. He was wearing a black nylon stocking over his head, gray shorts and shirt, slippers, and a cloth tied around his nose and mouth to keep out the dust, Lawrence said.

Detectives are still investigating how he got into the bank.

Lawrence said detectives suspect he may have had accomplices watching the bank and communicating with him by walkie-talkie. "But we haven't been able to confirm that," he said.

Damage to the bank was minimal, about $200, only enough to charge him with a criminal property damage misdemeanor, Lawrence said.

Gonzales was the subject of a search last year by his sister and friends, after his roommate reported him missing. The roommate told police Gonzales was supposed to have returned to his native country of Belize, but was going to stop in California to visit his sister, detectives said.

The roommate became worried when Gonzales did not visit his sister and his car was found in Lahaina.

"One day, he never came back home," said police Sgt. Robert Fernandez, who works in missing persons. Fernandez said police officers had him listed as missing until they found him in the bank Friday night.

Gonzales told police he had moved to Oahu, but recently returned to Maui and was living in Kihei.