Witness says
she escaped from
accused killer’s car

By Gary T. Kubota
Star-Bulletin

WAILUKU -- A woman who was bound and gagged by a man charged with two murders says she used her elbows to hit the inside latch to free herself from a car trunk and flee to safety.

"I didn't know what was going to happen to me," said Abra Pearsall. "I was scared."

Pearsall, 24, is serving as a key prosecution witness against her former boyfriend Daniel Kosi in the gunshot killing of Maui kickboxer Eric Vinge near his Paukukalo home on Aug. 3, 1997.

She told a Maui Circuit Court jury yesterday she was in the car when Kosi stood on the floorboard and fired a semiautomatic handgun at Vinge, after the two men quarreled.

Kosi, 25, is accused of attempted murder for allegedly trying to kill Pearsall, who was the only eyewitness to the shooting.

He's also charged with 13 other counts, including the murder of 17-year-old Aisha Tolentino during a police standoff that ended on Aug. 15, 1997.

Pearsall said she left Maui shortly after the fatal shooting of Vinge because she feared Kosi.

She said she later called police and returned to testify because "it was the right thing to do."

Pearsall said she asked for no police protection because she didn't want authorities near her when she was still using crystal methamphetamine.

She was about a day away from testifying in court about Vinge's death when Kosi abducted her in the parking lot of the Maui Coast Hotel, she said.

Near the underside of a bridge approaching Kihei, Kosi and Pearsall got out of the car and he put handcuffs around her ankles and her hands and rolled tape around her eyes and mouth.

"He said he had a really good friend in the (police) department and I shouldn't have ratted on him," Pearsall said. "He hit me in the face."

Pearsall said he then pushed her into the trunk, where she could hardly breathe but was able to bite through the tape.

At one point, she thought the car was on fire and she began frantically hitting the latch with her elbows and the trunk popped open.

Pearsall said she backed her way out of the car trunk and rolled down a hill before she saw a man coming down the stairs.

The man took her to his condominium unit at the Maui Banyans and called police for help.

Kosi has refused to be present during his trial and suffered scratches and a cut to his head after jail officials were forced to medicate him Tuesday, according to his attorney Joseph Mottl III.