Council removes prosecuting attorney from office
WAILUKU, Maui (AP) — The Maui County Council voted to remove the county’s prosecuting attorney over claims of violence and threats in the workplace.
The unanimous vote Friday to remove Prosecuting Attorney Don Guzman approved a resolution submitted by Mayor Michael Victorino in October.
Guzman, who has been on administrative leave since September, said Friday he has hired an employment law attorney and will contest the decision.
In an email, he characterized the accusations as “slander and defamation.”
Guzman also said he was denied due process during an investigation and the ensuing proceedings.
The council’s Governance, Ethics and Transparency Committee heard testimony Nov. 5 from five Department of the Prosecuting Attorney employees recounting examples of what they said were Guzman exhibiting rage, yelling, swearing, making demeaning comments and threats and taking physical action.
Those testifying said there were six events this year and another in 2015.
Other employees wrote and spoke in support of Guzman.
The council contracted an independent investigation by an outside attorney following a complaint filed by Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Leslee Matthews over an email exchange and angry confrontation with Guzman regarding a coronavirus-related safety plan.
Guzman “engaged in threats of intimidation to inflict mental harm or injury,” the investigation report said.
“I could have handled the situation differently, in a more calm manner, but in my view her insubordination required a strong statement at that time,” Guzman wrote in response to the report.
Guzman has since taken sensitivity training sessions and addressed personal medical issues, he said.
Guzman held the council’s Kahului seat from 2013 to 2018 and was appointed by Victorino to head the prosecuting attorney’s office in March 2019 after an unsuccessful 2018 bid for mayor.
Lab brings closure to Pearl Harbor families
OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — The remains of Nebraska and Iowa sailors who were killed in the attack on Pearl Harbor 79 years ago will get to return home soon thanks to the work of experts at Offutt Air Force Base.
It’s part of a five-year effort to identify Navy sailors and Marines who went missing while serving on the USS Oklahoma, a battleship that capsized during the attacks.
The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency is working to identify remains by using DNA technology and other modern methods, according to the Omaha World-Herald.
In 2015, the accounting agency disinterred 61 caskets National Military Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu that contained unidentified remains from the Oklahoma.
The caskets were brought to an Offutt laboratory, which had plenty of space to spread out the more than 13,000 bones they contained.
The agency’s historians and forensic anthropologists had hoped to identify 315, or 80%, of the missing men by the end of 2020.
With weeks to go, they have identified 281 of them.
Only 35 of the 429 sailors and Marines who died on the ship were identified during the war.
The remains of the others were buried in the graves of the unknown.
Twenty-three of the sailors who died had spent some or all of their youth in Nebraska or western Iowa.