Hospital escapee captured after police receive tip-off

Police captured yesterday a 36-year-old man considered dangerous who escaped from the Hawaii State Hospital in Kaneohe.

Casey Nies, who was acquitted by reason of insanity for allegedly attacking a Maui police officer with a samurai sword in 2003, had escaped at 9 a.m. Monday.

Police received tips on Nies' whereabouts, and officers arrested him at a Kaneohe bus stop at 2:30 p.m. yesterday. He was booked at the Kaneohe station and returned to the State Hospital.

In 2003, Nies was arrested and charged with first-degree attempted murder after he allegedly attacked a police officer with a samurai sword outside a Kihei drugstore.

Nies, who had slashed a man, was shot in the pelvis by police when he refused to drop the sword.

He was declared unfit to stand trial after a panel of mental health experts declared him “;actively psychotic.”; He was committed to the State Hospital for treatment in 2005.

Waianae woman dies after crash near Yokohama Bay

A 28-year-old Waianae woman died yesterday after the car she was driving went off an embankment near Yokohama Bay and plummeted 20 to 30 feet.

Honolulu police said excessive speed may have been a factor in the accident.

The vehicle was headed east on Farrington Highway at 12:05 p.m. yesterday when it approached a left roadway curve, veered right, struck the end of a guardrail, went off a cliff and tumbled onto boulders below, police said.

Lifeguards tried to resuscitate the woman before paramedics arrived and transferred her to a medical clinic in Waianae, where she was pronounced dead, according to police.

The death was the 23rd fatality this year, compared with 13 for the same period last year.