Perry denies taking
part in killing
A 24-year-old Kailua man charged with murdering 37-year-old Tracey Tominaga in April 2002 admitted yesterday that he pointed a gun at her to scare her, but he said he never harmed her.
"I never hit her in the head with the gun, I never poked her head with the gun; the gun hadn't gotten closer than four feet from her," Jason Perry testified.
Perry is on trial in Circuit Court for the murders of Tominaga and Edward Fuller, who prosecutors say was killed afterward to prevent him from talking about Tominaga's death.
Prosecutors contend Perry beat Tominaga and later strangled her to death. Her body was uncovered in a shallow grave above Makakilo.
Perry blamed five other men who were with him at a remote Makakilo property for beating, kicking, and slapping Tominaga repeatedly and striking her hard with a tree branch, splitting her head open.
"It was nuts," he said.
Perry said he did not try to stop the men from assaulting her because all he could think of was the man who had stuck a shotgun in his face a few days earlier at Tominaga's Kapahulu home and robbed him of "ice," or crystal methamphetamine. Perry, who allegedly was an "ice" dealer, said all he wanted from Tominaga was the man's name, but she would not give him a satisfactory answer. Perry said he panicked because in a matter of minutes, his plan to simply scare Tominaga "blew up."
It only took 15 minutes from the time she was first slapped in the face "to the time she no longer had any more life," he said.
His testimony continues Monday.