An insurance company has won a six-figure civil judgment against a 33-year-old Honokaa man accused of causing a traffic collision that killed two women in Hamakua almost three years ago.
An insurance company has won a six-figure civil judgment against a 33-year-old Honokaa man accused of causing a traffic collision that killed two women in Hamakua almost three years ago.
Hilo Circuit Judge Glenn Hara on July 29 granted Government Employees Insurance Co. a $100,000 default judgment against Alfred Berdon III, plus $415 in fees and costs.
Court records indicate neither Berdon, who is incarcerated, nor a legal representative showed up for a court hearing on that date.
According to GEICO’s suit, the insurer paid $100,000 to the estate of Josefina Visaya. The 61-year-old Keaau woman was killed, as was 54-year-old Patrocinia Cadang, in a traffic crash on Hawaii Belt Road (Highway 19) on Sept. 10, 2012.
The women were landscapers from Puna Certified Nursery returning home from a job in Waikoloa.
Police say Berdon was driving a pickup truck and collided with the van they were riding in while attempting to pass. The van was run off the road and went down a 15-foot embankment. In addition to the two women killed, three other women were critically injured in the crash, and four other people sustained less serious injuries, police said.
The driver of the van, Efren Chavez, sustained minor injuries. Berdon, whom police said was driving after his license had been suspended and without insurance, wasn’t injured in the crash.
Berdon is charged with two counts each of first-degree negligent homicide, first-degree negligent injury and second-degree negligent injury. He is in custody at Hawaii Community Correctional Center after his family surrendered his $32,000 bail in November 2014.
Deputy Prosecutor Rick Damerville said in September 2012 Berdon tested positive the day after the crash for THC, the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana, and oxycodone, a semi-synthetic opioid painkiller marketed as Oxycontin.
“That is only based on a urine test,” Damerville cautioned at the time. “That’s a presumptive test; it’s not a lab test.”
County Prosecutor Mitch Roth declined to disclose the results of Berdon’s toxicology reports when Berdon was indicted by a Hilo grand jury in May 2014.
No trial date has been set for Berdon, but Hilo Circuit Judge Greg Nakamura on Wednesday set a status hearing for 8 a.m. Sept. 25.
Visaya’s family endured a second tragedy when her 66-year-old husband, Cenon Visaya, was killed on Sept. 27, 2013, when a pickup truck driven by a man witnesses say was racing with another pickup crossed the median of Volcano Highway (Highway 11) in Keaau and smashed into the bicycle the elderly man was riding.
The truck’s driver, Siaiku Lucky Aholelei, was sentenced in October 2014 to 10 years in prison after pleading no contest to negligent homicide.
Email John Burnett at jburnett@hawaiitribune-herald.com.