Arrest made in
assault on senior

A Kauai sex offender is held in
victimizing a Moiliili woman, 85

A 37-year-old convicted sex offender was expected to be charged today in the March 12 burglary, kidnapping and first-degree sexual assault of an 85-year-old Moiliili woman at her apartment near the University of Hawaii, police said.

David Michael Baldaino: He was free on bail after failing to register as a sex offender

David Michael Baldaino was arrested at 8:25 a.m. yesterday in the Punahou area.

Baldaino has convictions in two separate cases on Kauai. He was sentenced to five years for third-degree sexual assault in 1989. He was found guilty of first-degree burglary a year earlier.

Baldaino was arrested and charged March 18 for failing to register as a sex offender, and had been released on $20,000 bail.

The suspect allegedly gained entry into the 85-year-old woman's Old Waialae Road home, held her at knifepoint and sexually assaulted her.

Honolulu police Capt. Frank Fujii said the case was one of four sexual assaults in the area in the past two weeks.

"We want to reassure everybody that there is not a so-called series of sex assaults occurring in the Manoa area," Fujii said. "I know we've had four sex assaults occurring in the past two weeks, but they're all unrelated."

He said the cases are coincidental. "There's no reason for people to be alarmed," he said.

Police have arrested another suspect in one of the cases.

Shannon K. Kalahiki, 24, was charged in the March 23 kidnapping of a woman at the Manoa Innovation Center on Woodlawn Drive. Kalahiki allegedly brandished a knife and ordered the woman to drive to the back of Manoa School, where he sexually assaulted her. He also allegedly forced her to withdraw $100 from an automated teller machine at Manoa Marketplace.

A 72-year-old Kaimuki woman was sexually assaulted March 15 after a man brandishing a knife broke into her Waialae Avenue apartment about 8 a.m., police said. They have no suspects in that case, Fujii said.

And police are continuing to search for suspects in the alleged rape of an 18-year-old community college student by several men. The woman said she was abducted by five men Monday near UH-Manoa and taken to a Manoa park where several men sexually assaulted her.

"Good old police work" led to Baldaino's arrest yesterday, Fujii said. Police were awaiting the results of DNA tests, and Fujii said more details would be released today when Baldaino is charged.