By JOHN BURNETT
Tribune-Herald staff writer
Trial has been set for a Honomu man accused of stabbing a housemate to death last month.
On Thursday, Hilo Circuit Judge Glenn Hara ordered 49-year-old Daniel Schuster to stand trial on Dec. 3 at 8:30 a.m.
Schuster is facing a charge of second-degree murder for the slaying of 30-year-old Joshua Trickel, who was found dead at Schuster’s Pua Street home on July 22. Schuster’s also charged with possession of methamphetamine and drug paraphernalia, after police reported finding two glass pipes with residue in the residence. He’s pleaded not guilty to all charges.
Schuster, accompanied by his court-appointed attorney, Stanton Oshiro, stood silently during the arraignment, looking mostly downward, and answering the judge’s questions with a simple “yes” and “no.”
There were no family members of either Trickel or Schuster in the half-filled courtroom, but Trickel’s mother, Leslie Peters, who lives in Wisconsin, told the Tribune-Herald by phone afterward: “I know it’s true, but I’m not believing it. That’s how I go through every day. I can’t let go of Josh. I can’t believe that Josh is gone. I don’t. I just go through every day thinking that.
“… I hope Daniel will pay for what he did, and what else can you get out of it? I hope he spends the rest of his life in prison. There’s nothing that’s going to bring my son back. Nothing.”
At a preliminary hearing on July 30, Laura Serene, who lived in a separate unit in Schuster’s home, testified Schuster told her two days before the fatal stabbing that he and Trickel were selling household items to raise $3,000 they owed an Oahu drug dealer, and that he and Trickel would be leaving for Oahu after selling the items. She said she last saw Trickel alive at about 1 a.m. on July 22, when he came downstairs to inform her that he and Schuster would be moving furniture and cleaning upstairs.
Serene said that about 6 a.m. that morning, Schuster approached her while she was feeding her birds on a downstairs lanai and told her he needed her help upstairs and that “it was important.”
Serene went upstairs a couple of minutes later and saw Schuster “holding his wrist with a towel” and that she “saw blood on his leg and off his hand.” She said that Schuster told her that Trickel had stabbed him after he refused to get out of bed and that Schuster “said that he had then grabbed a knife that he had in bed and he stabbed him back. And then he said, ‘I think I killed him.’”
Serene said she then saw Trickel “laying in a pool of blood,” and after telling Schuster to check Trickel for signs of life, ran downstairs to call 911.
Schuster remains in custody at Hawaii Community Correctional Center in lieu of $104,000 bail.
Email John Burnett at jburnett@hawaiitribune-herald.com.
