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Man who killed pedestrian
on Pali begins 30
days in jail

By Debra Barayuga
Star-Bulletin

The attorney for a 22-year-old man sentenced to 30 days in jail for hitting and killing 90-year-old Anna Hara on the Pali Highway said prison is no place for his client.

"He doesn't belong there," said Nelson Goo after his client, Brandon Tamashiro, was taken into custody to begin serving his sentence.

Tamashiro was grateful, however, that he didn't get a longer sentence, Goo said. He will ask that Tamashiro be housed in the Oahu Community Correctional Center annex, where nonviolent offenders are kept.

District Judge Colette Garibaldi yesterday sentenced Tamashiro to one year probation and imposed conditions that included 30 days in jail, a five-year suspension of his driver's license and 500 hours of community service.

Garibaldi agreed with the state that incarceration would not serve the purposes of rehabilitation or deterrence, but was needed to punish Tamashiro for taking a life -- his second.

Tamashiro was 17 when he struck and killed 80-year-old Philip Kong as he crossed the Pali not far from where Hara was hit.

The state noted four traffic citations on Tamashiro's driving record from May 1996 to February 1999, three of those for speeding.

But Tamashiro was not speeding, nor was he under the influence of drugs or alcohol at the time he struck Hara, Garibaldi said. Police reports indicated he didn't see Hara, as shown by the lack of skid marks.

And it appeared to the court that he was not a good driver and was not always aware of his surroundings, Garibaldi said.

Tamashiro pleaded no contest in December to third-degree negligent homicide, punishable by up to one year in jail, because he wanted to spare the Hara family more grief.

The state had asked for at least six months. Goo had sought probation.

Church members and acquaintances of Tamashiro asked the court not to impose jail time, describing him as conscientious, respectful and extremely remorseful. Tamashiro is productive and can better serve society, but not in jail, they said.

Goo argued that even one day in jail could ruin Tamashiro: "Why take the chance he comes out worse than he goes in?"

Hara's sons said 30 days wasn't enough but was better than nothing. In court earlier, they testified about the loss of their caring mother and how it could have been avoided.

Hitting their mother with a car was tantamount to cutting her head off with a sword or shooting her with a gun, said eldest son Edmund Hara.

Not a day passes that he doesn't drive past the area where she was killed and envision the the pain she must have suffered from the extensive injuries she received, he said.

Prison for Tamashiro is needed to prevent him from killing again, Edmund Hara said.

It's unfair for Tamashiro to kill two people and only face a year, said Trish Morikawa, Anna Hara's granddaughter.

Her grandmother was killed three weeks before her wedding, an event she had planned for since Morikawa was a little girl.