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XEROX SHOOTINGS TRIAL

Workday began with
a flurry of bullets

Focus now on jury
Insane, or in control?
Day began with bullets

By Suzanne Tswei
Star-Bulletin

"The winds of uncertainty blew upon the lives of seven men in November of last year. At 8 o'clock in the morning of what should have been a typical sunshine and tradewind day, those men were getting ready to begin their day of work. By 8:15 they were all dead -- their bodies bullet-riddled and bleeding, massacred by a man with a gun."

So began city Prosecutor Peter Carlisle's recounting of the worst multiple murder in Hawaii's history, in the trial of former copier repairman Byran Uyesugi.

Whether Uyesugi shot and killed the victims is not in dispute, but Uyesugi's attorneys argue that their client's severe mental illness rendered him legally insane at the time. They attributed the slayings to Uyesugi's delusion disorder that had been diagnosed in 1993.

Uyesugi was plagued by a black shadow, poking sensations to the back of his head, and beliefs that Xerox and his co-workers conspired against him.

While the mental-health experts all testified that Uyesugi suffered from mental illness, they disagreed whether he was insane. The state argued that the delusions played no part in the killings. Uyesugi "deliberately, methodically and maliciously" planned and executed the killings of the seven men out of hatred and fear of losing his job, Carlisle said.

According to testimony in court, Uyesugi behaved normally the night before the Nov. 2 fatal shootings. He ate dinner, watched television and slept soundly. The next morning he tended to his koi and goldfish before leaving for work.

Shooter appeared calm

Uyesugi appeared normal and calm when he arrived at Xerox for a work group meeting. But he had a loaded 9mm semiautomatic handgun and two extra magazines of bullets concealed under his aloha shirt. For a few minutes, he stood by the water cooler to ponder his next move.

At first Uyesugi decided he would attend the meeting. He returned to his company van in the parking lot to pick up his laptop computer. Then he stood by the water cooler again, thinking over his next step.

"F--- it," he said to himself, and went into the computer room where he fired a single bullet into the back of Ron Kawamae's head.

Although Kawamae was not a member of Uyesugi's work group, Uyesugi singled him out as an instigator who turned his co-workers against him. Kawamae knew of Uyesugi's feelings toward him and had predicted he would be the first victim if Uyesugi carried out his threat to kill everyone.

Sitting next to Kawamae was Jason Balatico, who also did not belong in Uyesugi's work group. Uyesugi believed Balatico was an FBI agent who spied on him, stole his woodwork and mutilated his fish. Seeing Kawamae shot, Balatico charged toward Uyesugi but was gunned down with five bullets.

The third man in the computer room, Randall Shin, was spared but went into shock after other the two were killed.

Alerted by popping sounds

Uyesugi then walked down the hallway to the conference room where his work group had gathered. His boss, Melvin Lee, seeing Uyesugi holding a gun, asked him to turn over the gun. Uyesugi shot him once in the torso and then aimed his gun at the rest of his colleagues. He fired one or two shots to disable them and then returned to shoot some of them again after they fell to the ground.

While Uyesugi went into the conference room, the supervisor of another group, Ron Yamanaka came out of the break room across the hall to investigate the loud popping sounds he had heard. Yamanaka saw Uyesugi standing inside the door in a "combat stance" and Lee falling backward.

Yamanaka ran down the hallway and saw the bodies of Kawamae and Balatico and a stunned Shin in the computer room at the end of the hall. He and Shin fled down the front stairway and escaped out the front door.

Uyesugi later said he would have shot Yamanaka if Yamanaka had been "standing around and looking stupid or something." Yamanaka, a 35-year employee at Xerox, said he retired in December as result of the shootings.

After Lee, Uyesugi shot Ron Kataoka and John Sakamoto while Peter Mark and Ford Kanehira tried to hide behind an overturned table in the back of the room. Before shooting his last victim, Ford Kanehira, Uyesugi reloaded his gun after it apparently jammed and ran out of bullets.

In the end, only one person from Uyesugi's Work Group 22 escaped. Steve Matsuda, the group's lead technician, happened to be in a nearby office talking on the phone. Sensing something was wrong after hearing loud noises, he fled via the front stairway.

Matsuda did not see Uyesugi, but police found evidence that Uyesugi fired at Matsuda as he ran down the stairs.

Afterward Uyesugi left through the back stairway and back door. He drove away in his company van and went up to Makiki Heights. Others in the Xerox building discovered the bodies and called police. A massive islandwide manhunt ensued, with live radio broadcasts giving descriptions of Uyesugi and his van.

A jogger spotted Uyesugi's van about 9:45 a.m. parked near the Hawaii Nature Center. Police evacuated the area and a police negotiator talked Uyesugi into surrendering peacefully about 3 p.m.

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Xerox killings