By JOHN BURNETT Tribune-Herald staff writer ADVERTISING A Hilo man was sentenced Tuesday to 10 years in prison for striking, dragging and killing a mo-ped rider with an armored van last year. Hilo Circuit Judge Glenn Hara ordered Keolaokalani W.
By JOHN BURNETT
Tribune-Herald staff writer
A Hilo man was sentenced Tuesday to 10 years in prison for striking, dragging and killing a mo-ped rider with an armored van last year.
Hilo Circuit Judge Glenn Hara ordered Keolaokalani W. Kailianu to begin serving his prison term immediately.
Kailianu pleaded no contest in November to negligent homicide and leaving the scene of a fatal accident. In a plea deal with prosecutors, manslaughter and DUI charges were dropped.
Deputy Prosecutor Mitch Roth said Kailianu had been drinking at Stephanie’s Lounge on Kinoole Street and left the bar shortly before 10 p.m. on May 28 in a 2007 Ford armored van owned by his employer.
Kailianu had a blood-alcohol content of 0.283, more than three-and-a-half times the legal limit.
After leaving the bar, Kailianu made a left turn from the Puna-bound lanes of Kinoole onto Hualalai Street and struck the mo-ped ridden by 22-year-old Ted Braxton.
Police say Kailianu failed to yield the right of way, and that he dragged Braxton, who later died, about 100 feet. Kailianu drove on and dragged the mo-ped to Banyan Drive, where police found it still attached to the van’s undercarriage.
Braxton was a University of Hawaii at Hilo performing arts major from Huntingdon, Pa.
His father, Donald Braxton, told the court that since his son’s death, he and his wife have felt “only emptiness where joy used to be.”
“Sarah and I have been robbed of a child in whom we have invested 22 years of love, care, nurture and education,” he said. “We put everything into our children because the future is theirs, not ours.”
The elder Braxton described his son, the middle child of three, as “artistically gifted, exploring in his brief life his abilities to act, to make films, to perform and write music.”
“His desire at the end of his college career was to teach music to children,” he said. “… I’ve watched powerlessly as his mother has cried a river of tears over the past six months.”
Donald Braxton said that he was not looking for revenge and that no amount of incarceration will compensate for his family’s loss.
“We pray that during this time Mr. Kailianu will come to realize what he has taken with his negligence,” he said.
Kailianu, who was 41 when the collision occurred, did not address the court, but Deputy Public Defender Michael Ebesugawa described his client as “remorseful,” Roth said.
Roth said that after reading things Braxton had written, seeing his videos and talking to his friends, he believes the young man was “an up-and-coming star.”
“And just like that, his light was turned out. It’s unfortunate,” he said.
“If you look at what is happening in this state with drinking and driving and deaths, the numbers are coming down, but it’s still too often, and it’s something we really need to get a hold of.”
Email John Burnett at
jburnett@hawaiitribune-
herald.com.
