A 45-year-old Puna man who shot his neighbor to death a year and a half ago was sentenced Thursday to 25 years in prison.
Seon Keoni Aki pleaded guilty Sept. 29 to manslaughter and no contest to use of a firearm in commission of a felony. As part of a plea deal, prosecutors reduced a second-degree murder charge to manslaughter and dropped a terroristic threatening charge and three other firearms charges.
Both charges Aki pleaded to are Class A felonies punishable by up to 20 years in prison, but Aki also was found guilty of violating his probation on a prior third-degree sex assault conviction. Hilo Circuit Judge Glenn Hara tacked on a five-year consecutive sentence for the probation violation.
Aki killed his next-door neighbor, 40-year-old Mateo Balinbin, on May 20, 2013, at Balinbin’s Maui Street home in Nanawale Estates. Balinbin, aka “Braddah Boy,” died from a single gunshot to the head fired from close range.
Francis Alcain, Aki’s court-appointed attorney, said Aki, who grew up on Oahu’s Waianae Coast, as a child suffered “severe physical, psychological, emotional, even sexual abuse” at the hands of his father. Alcain said when Aki was 7, he was forced to watch his father sexually assault Aki’s sister.
“As is not uncommon with young people who suffer psychological trauma, he turned to alcohol and marijuana to self-medicate,” Alcain said. “By age 16, he was using both drugs daily, and eventually expanded to cocaine use at age 16 and eventually used methamphetamine exclusively at age 19.”
Alcain said Aki started showing symptoms of schizophrenia, including hallucinations, at age 21, but obtained a carpentry certificate at Honolulu Community College. He said Aki’s criminal behavior started at about 30 as a result of his “spiraling addiction” and mental problems, and he was “institutionalized in Hawaii State Hospital in 2012,” where he was placed on the anti-psychotic drug Risperdal, which he still takes.
Aki was found fit to stand trial in December 2013. According to Alcain, the fitness finding was despite Aki showing symptoms of several mental conditions, including psychoaffective disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder. Alcain said Aki has a fixation “on a child being raped, on children being raped.”
Alcain said Aki was visited by his sister and her children shortly before Balinbin’s shooting, and said “it would seem to be a trigger point … that amplified this positive psychosis symptom.” While not saying so specifically, Alcain suggested Aki believed Balinbin was molesting children.
“He believes in it very strongly; despite that, he has remorse over what happened,” Alcain said.
Aki behaved bizarrely in previous court hearings. On May 28, 2013, as he was being led out of Hilo District Court, he turned toward the back of the courtroom gallery and yelled, “They’re raping people down at the house! You should know!”
“You’re the molester!” a woman’s voice shot back.
Deputy Prosecutor Shannon Kagawa noted this is the third time Aki has violated his probation on the sex assault conviction. She then turned her attention to the victim, Balinbin, whom she described as “a father, a boyfriend, a brother and a son, as well as a friend,” and described the slaying as “senseless.”
“On May 20, 2013, the defendant entered Braddah’s Boy home while Braddah Boy was sitting there, talking to a friend — and shot and killed him,” Kagawa said. “… There are statements the defendant makes (in the pre-sentencing report) … and there is absolutely no truth to it. There is no reason Braddah Boy had to die.”
Kagawa added family members of Balinbin were present but chose not to make a statement because it’s “too emotional for them … to face the defendant and explain to him how they feel. … It’s hard on the mother; it’s hard on Braddah Boy’s children.”
Aki addressed the court briefly, speaking loudly in staccato bursts.
“They can tell me that thing’s not true, brah, but it’s true,” Aki told the judge. “Everything that went happen was true. And we even get witnesses that know everything that went happen around our place. They’re always are trying to say that I’m delusional, but how come the mother them had to come and change the bullet-hole windows in my house?
“I’m sorry enough for what I did. That’s all I can do.”
While sentencing Aki, Hara told him, “I’m convinced that while you had mental health symptoms, you still knew what you were doing.”
“You made the conscious decision to end Mr. Balinbin’s life and, at that time, you knew the consequences of doing it, but chose to do it, anyway,” the judge said.
Email John Burnett at jburnett@hawaiitribune-herald.com.