UH student held
in solicitation stingInvestigators contend the
graduate student thought he
was going to meet a 13-year-old
A 35-year-old University of Hawaii student leader went to Zippy's Restaurant in Makiki Friday to meet who he thought was a 13-year-old girl he had corresponded with on the Internet, police said.
When plainclothes officers from Honolulu Police Department's Vice Division confronted Paul Clur, chairman of the UH Student Caucus, Clur fled, said Capt. Kevin Lima of HPD's Narcotics/Vice Division.
Lima said that as officers attempted to identify themselves, Clur turned, spilled coffee on the officer standing behind him, pushed him to the floor and ran out of the restaurant. They chased him across King Street and arrested him on Elm Street.
Attorney general's investigators charged Clur with first-degree electronic enticement of a child, a class B felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison. Clur was released Saturday after posting $50,000 bail. He is scheduled to appear in Honolulu District Court tomorrow.
The investigators and police also removed some material from Clur's office in the University's Campus Center where he has worked as a graduate assistant for student activities for the past two years, said Jan Javinar, Clur's supervisor.
Clur is a graduate student in political science, said Paul Costello, UH vice president of external affairs. Another student has been designated acting chairman of the student caucus to assume Clur's duties in case he is unable to carry out his responsibilities, said Doris Ching, UH vice president for student affairs.
The caucus is made up of leaders from student governments from various UH campuses and advocates for students to the UH administration, Legislature and other government agencies.
Ching described Clur as a decent person and a good leader. She said he is responsible, highly respected and well-liked by his fellow students, university administrators and chancellors.
"This comes as a shock to all of us. For me, this is a very sad day," Ching said.
Javinar, who has known Clur for at least four years, is also shocked. "It is so out of character for the person I know," he said.
Clur is the second person in two months arrested in an Internet sting by a state attorney general investigator posing as a 13-year-old girl.
On Sept. 11, an Oahu grand jury charged Armando Sierra, a 50-year-old business equipment engineer from Mililani, with electronic enticement of a child. According to the indictment, Sierra corresponded with the investigator from Aug. 28 to Sept. 9 and agreed to a meeting.
Sierra's trial is scheduled to begin next month. He remains in custody in lieu of $100,000 bail.
