The maternal aunt of a 9-year-old Hilo girl allegedly starved to death almost two years ago by her parents and maternal grandmother has filed a petition to become the personal representative of the girl’s estate.
According to court records, Honolulu attorney Joelle Segawa Kane filed the document on behalf of Tina Marie Kasten, a Florida resident and the aunt of Shaelynn Alohalani Haleaka Lehano-Stone, on Wednesday in Hilo Circuit Court. The petition requests a court find that Lehano-Stone died intestate, which means without a will, and appoint Kasten as the estate’s representative.
The petition also requests that Hilo Circuit Judge Henry Nakamoto, who’s assigned the case, expedite a hearing on the petition, as the statute of limitations to appoint a personal representative expires June 28, the two-year anniversary of the girl’s death.
An appointment of a personal representative is necessary before any civil lawsuit could be filed on behalf of the girl’s estate.
Police and emergency medical personnel were summoned June 28, 2016, to a Kinoole Street apartment almost directly across from Hilo’s central fire station. They reportedly found Lehano-Stone unconscious and apparently severely malnourished. The girl was taken to Hilo Medical Center, where she died a few hours later.
The girl’s parents, 50-year-old Kevin Lehano and 34-year-old Tiffany Stone, and her maternal grandmother, 60-year-old Henrietta Stone — who was the girl’s legal guardian — are charged with murder for the girl’s death. All are incarcerated awaiting trial.
Lehano-Stone was taken out of Hilo Union Elementary School to be home-schooled, and the indictments state she was denied adequate food, water and medical care from “on or about Oct. 23, 2015,” until her death.
Kasten’s petition notes the girl’s parents have a right to be appointed personal representative of Lehano-Stone’s estate, but describes them as “unsuitable as they are incarcerated … pending trial … .”
According to court records, Lehano-Stone was on the radar of Child Welfare Services almost from birth, and the state agency took her and at least one of her two siblings, a brother, into temporary custody in 2007.
Lehano-Stone’s case has elements reminiscent of Peter Kema Jr., aka “Peter Boy,” a 6-year-old who disappeared in 1997, and as it turned out, died that year, probably from septic shock due to extreme abuse. His body was discarded by his father, now serving 20 years for manslaughter. There also are similarities to the case of “Alexis,” a 10-year-old Puna girl starved and tortured in 2005 while in the care of Hyacinth Poouahi, a friend of the girl’s mother. Alexis survived, but is permanently disabled, and Poouahi is serving a 20-year prison term.
In a Feb. 7 email to state Sen. Josh Green and Rep. John Mizuno, Steve Lane, a retired private investigator appointed by Nakamoto as special master in the Peter Boy case to help determine if his surviving siblings have grounds for a wrongful death lawsuit, advocated for Senate Bill 2273 and House Bill 1885. Those companion bills would have established protocols that would allow children in foster care to obtain legal representation if they suffered an injury that arose to the level of civil liability and the appointment of a special master to investigate any potential tort claims.
Both bills died when the respective judiciary committees didn’t schedule hearings. The protocols in those measures were patterned after one for the 1st Circuit’s family courts established by Judge R. Mark Browning, which Lane said allowed for his appointment as special master in the Kema case.
Lane revealed in the correspondence that he petitioned Family Court on the Big Island in December, requesting to be appointed pro bono (without cost) in another extreme abuse case here, but was denied.
“Because the petition was filed in Family Court and those proceedings are confidential, I will not disclose the name of the case, victim or presiding judge,” Lane wrote. “That said, this is a fairly recent case where a young child was allegedly tortured and starved for years by her parents and ultimately died. Again there are alleged reports of the child repeatedly returned to an abusive family as occurred in the Kema case. Two other siblings in the home were removed, made wards of the state of Hawaii and placed in foster care. One of them, age 11, is reportedly almost non-verbal, likely the result of the abuse she suffered in the same home for years.”
In his email, Lane quoted what he said were numbered points the judge made in his written decision denying the appointment of a special master, including:
2. To date the 3rd Circuit has not followed or accepted the 1st Circuit Protocol Regarding Possible Torts Arising from (Hawaii Revised Statutes) Chapter 587 Cases.
3. Therefore, the 3rd Circuit decides petitions for appointment of special master on a case-by-case basis.
Lane told the lawmakers he found “several things that are troubling about this decision.”
“One, this is the same judge who approved the petition in the Peter Kema case, referencing the same protocol in the same circuit,” he wrote. “Two, the judge is also the judge assigned to preside over the criminal prosecutions of two of the three defendants who are allegedly responsible for the harm to these children.”
Nakamoto is assigned to the cases of Tiffany and Henrietta Stone, while Hilo Circuit Judge Greg Nakamura is assigned to the case of Kevin Lehano.
In the email, Lane called the denial of his petition “just more compelling evidence that we cannot leave the responsibility of caring for the welfare of some of the most vulnerable members of the community up to the hope that caregivers and even jurists will simply do the ‘right thing’ absent some compulsorily statutory authority.”
Another bill to add and fund four additional CWS workers to East Hawaii as part of a five-year pilot program was passed Wednesday by a joint House-Senate conference committee. That measure now goes to Gov. David Ige, who is expected to sign it into law.
Email John Burnett at jburnett@hawaiitribune-herald.com.