By JOHN BURNETT
Tribune-Herald staff writer
A 19-year-old Mountain View man who carjacked a pharmacy student at knifepoint in July so he could use the man’s car to visit his girlfriend pleaded guilty Monday to first-degree robbery.
Prosecutors dropped an auto theft charge against Alkapone Cruz-Balles in exchange for his plea. The plea deal allows the prosecution to seek a 20-year prison term on the robbery charge, which is a Class A felony. The defense is allowed to argue for an eight-year prison term for Cruz-Balles under the so-called “young adult defendant” statute, which applies to felony defendants less than 22 who have not been previously convicted of a felony as an adult or adjudicated as a juvenile for an offense that would be a felony if tried as an adult.
Cruz-Balles is accused of accosting 24-year-old Alexander Guimaraes, a student at the University of Hawaii at Hilo College of Pharmacy, in the Hilo Target store parking lot during the early evening of July 17.
He took the victim’s 2013 Hyundai Sonata at knifepoint after Guimaraes was loading his groceries into the trunk and fled the scene.
“I pretty much walked up to him and forced him to give up his keys,” Cruz-Balles told Hilo Circuit Judge Glenn Hara.
“And how did you do that?” the judge inquired.
“With a knife,” Cruz-Balles replied.
At a preliminary hearing on July 24, police Detective Grant Todd testified that Cruz-Balles told him he chose Guimaraes as the victim for the brazen daylight carjacking because he “looked easy.”
“He stated that the main reason for taking the car is he wanted to go see his girlfriend who was in Pahoa at the time,” Todd said at the time. Court documents identified Cruz-Balles’ girlfriend as a 14-year-old Hawaiian Beaches girl.
Police said Cruz-Balles drove Guimaraes’ car to Luquin’s Mexican Restaurant in Pahoa, where his girlfriend was eating dinner with her family.
He picked her up and drove to Isaac Hale Beach Park in Pohoiki, where officers spotted the car and arrested Cruz-Balles.
Hara ordered Cruz-Balles to return for sentencing on Jan. 21 at 9 a.m. Cruz-Balles remains in custody at Hawaii Community Correctional Center in lieu of $12,000 bail.
Email John Burnett at
jburnett@hawaiitribune-
herald.com.
