Man who fled Wailuku police gets 10 years for meth offense
WAILUKU, Maui — A man who ditched a backpack containing methamphetamine while fleeing from police has been sentenced to 10 years in prison.
Kainoa Duarte, 43, said in court he had let his addiction take control. He pleaded no contest to second-degree promotion of a dangerous drug.
Police reported finding more than one-eighth ounce of methamphetamine and drug paraphernalia in the backpack he dropped while fleeing from police in 2016 in Wailuku.
Duarte also pleaded no contest to two counts of second-degree theft in another case. He pawned a camera that was among more than $9,000 in belongings stolen from a vehicle that was parked at Lahaina Cannery Mall in September 2015.
Duarte had been in the court system for 10 or 11 years, 2nd Circuit Judge Rhonda Loo said Wednesday.
“You’ve had convictions up the yin yang, some very minor, some very major,” Loo said.
Duarte graduated from the Maui Drug Court program of treatment and supervision.
“For way too long, I have let my addiction control my life, telling myself I wasn’t hurting anyone but me,” Duarte said in court. “But that’s not true for the people whose camera I pawned. It’s not true for my family who sit in the gallery and has been affected by my ice addition. They hurt more than I do.”
A plea agreement between the defense and prosecution recommended prison for Duarte.
“I’m not happy to be getting sentenced to prison, but if I wasn’t, right now I’d be on the streets doing the same thing,” he said. “I’ve wasted the first half of my life and missed out on my children’s. I will not take the second half for granted.”
Duarte was ordered to pay $9,445 in restitution.
Military identifies Oahu remains as World War II aviator
HONOLULU — Remains recovered in 2016 from mountainous terrain near Kahuku Point have been identified as a lost World War II aviator.
Navy Reserve Ensign Harold P. DeMoss, 21, was circling Oahu on a night training flight with two other F6F-3 Hellcats on June 23, 1945, when his plane separated from the others in cloud cover.
The crashed and burning plane was spotted from the air the next day.
DeMoss’ niece, Judy Ivey, said the family was told earlier this month by military officials that their relative had been identified. She said his wedding ring and pilot’s wings also were recovered.
James DeMoss, Ivey’s father, is the pilot’s only sibling.
“I’m excited, and now I’m just more anxious than ever,” Ivey said. “My mom passed away March 4, and that put even more of an urgency in my mind to get this done, because my dad’s 85.”
The search for DeMoss “was important for my grandparents. They started it,” Ivey said. “They continued it from the day he crashed — trying to get him brought home.”
A military search party in 1945 found the still-smoking plane in rugged terrain and buried the remains of a person who could not be identified.
The Navy’s Bureau of Medicine and Surgery said in a 1948 letter to the family that “an attempt to recover the remains was considered impracticable” because the site was 7 miles (11 kilometers) from a traveled highway and could be reached only “on foot over rocky ledges, through heavy undergrowth, and over extremely rugged and dangerous ground.”
Ivey sought help from Ted Darcy and the WFI Research Group, which compiles and preserves World War II records. Darcy, in turn, got in touch with the Hawaii Aviation Preservation Society, which located the crash site in late 2011.
A nine-person military team from the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, which has a lab on Oahu, dug through mud and plane wreckage in 2016 to find DeMoss’ remains.
The Army provided Black Hawk helicopters to drop off team members who had to descend hundreds of feet on a cable to reach the remote site.
Arrangements are still being made to return the aviator for burial in a family plot in Nashville that contains DeMoss family members back to the 1800s, Ivey said.
“For my dad, he’ll be happy,” Ivey said. “He just said he’d like to have him there and know he’s next to his parents. And (someday) my dad’s going to be buried next to him.”
