A 27-year-old prison furlough violator who was apprehended last December after an armed confrontation with police in Hilo was sentenced Thursday to 10 years in prison.
Hilo Circuit Judge Glenn Hara ruled the sentence for Joshua Lopes-Keli would run consecutively to the 10-year term he’s serving on a 2010 robbery conviction, which expires Dec. 20, 2020. He also ordered Lopes-Keli to serve a mandatory minimum term of 40 months before becoming eligible for parole.
Lopes-Keli pleaded guilty last month to first-degree terroristic threatening and being a felon in possession of a firearm. In return for his guilty pleas, prosecutors dropped charges of violating terms of furlough, resisting arrest, promoting a dangerous drug, marijuana possession, drug paraphernalia and four other firearms offenses.
Lopes-Keli was wanted by police when officers found him at about 1:06 a.m. Dec. 5 in a parking lot on Rainbow Drive in Hilo, sitting in a car with 23-year-old Michaela Pacyao of Waikoloa. According to court documents, when three officers approached the car, Lopes-Keli produced a Glock .45-caliber semi-automatic handgun while telling officers to shoot him.
Officer Christopher Jelsma struggled with Lopes-Keli for possession of the firearm. Two other officers, identified in court documents as Thomas Chun-Ming and Gibson Kahele, were also present. A Taser was deployed to subdue Lopes-Keli.
Lopes-Keli’s attorney, Deputy Public Defender Michael Ebesugawa, argued for concurrent terms of imprisonment and no mandatory minimum sentence, telling the judge, “We hope that Mr. Lopes-Keli will be released while still a young man, at a time while he still possesses the will, the time and the strength to reconstruct his life.”
Deputy Prosecutor Haaheo Kahoohalahala asked Hara to sentence Lopes-Keli to consecutive sentences and the mandatory-minimum term.
“Although no one was injured in this incident, it’s clear that Officer Jelsma basically had to struggle with the defendant in order to get the firearm away. That put not only Officer Jelsma, but the other officers who responded to the incident in (danger of) great harm. It put (Pacyao) in great harm. … Officer Jelsma did indicate he feared for his life that night,” Kahoohalahala said.
Lopes-Keli, who previously said he was under the influence of methamphetamine during the incident, told the court he is “truly sorry” and wants “to take full responsibility for (his) actions over the past two years.”
“I was actually doing good. I obtained a full-time job in a Japanese restaurant,” Lopes-Keli said. “I was participating in (Narcotics Anonymous and Alcoholics Anonymous), meetings that celebrate recovery. … I was living on my own. I let success slip through my fingers … when I started to use again.”
Lopes-Keli told the court last month he was hoping an officer would shoot him to death during the incident.
While passing sentence, Hara said Lopes-Keli’s behavior resulted in “a heightened and increased risk of harming members of the public, maybe even harming yourself” and placed Pacyao in the potential line of fire.
“There was a warrant out for you and the warrant was for not turning yourself in for furlough. You were on the run,” the judge said. “… You are a … convicted felon, and I’m sure the courts in Honolulu told you when you were convicted that you can’t possess a firearm. … But you went on and, for some reason, armed yourself with a firearm. It looks like a Glock .45-caliber pistol, a fairly deadly weapon, not a pea shooter. … And when (officers) finally got a hold of that weapon, it was loaded, a round chambered, ready to be fired.”
Email John Burnett at jburnett@hawaiitribune-herald.com.
