Two sides of story heard in assault case against off-duty cop

KEALAKEKUA — Two very different versions of how an off-duty police officer came to injure his 72-year-old upstairs neighbor at the Kalanikai condominium complex off Kuakini Highway the night of Jan. 22. were presented during a preliminary hearing Thursday.

Jami Harper, 39, Kailua-Kona, is charged with second-degree assault and was in Judge Margaret Masunaga’s 3rd District Courtroom, where the state had to prove there was probable cause to carry the case forward.

In the end, Masunaga found there was enough there to continue the case in circuit court. The crux of the conflicting stories was who acted as the initial aggressor when the two met on the third floor of their apartment complex around 11 p.m. that night.

The victim testified he was on his cellphone with his friend when he heard yelling and pounding on his screen door. Still talking to his friend, he told the court he went to the door to find out what was going on.

“I could hear ranting in a loud voice about something I didn’t understand,” he said.

The victim’s friend told police that he could hear yelling and the victim asking who was at the door, according to police testimony.

The victim, who lives on the third floor of the unit, said he opened the inner wooden door to see a man he didn’t recognize, later identified as Harper, shouting at him from the other side of the screen door.

He wasn’t able to understand what the man was saying, so he opened the screen door so he could see and hear better. He didn’t feel threatened, he told deputy prosecuting attorney Kate Deleon.

Harper agreed that he went to the victim’s door, according to statements to police. But here the first major divergence in the stories starts.

The victim said he had his right hand on the doorway when he was grabbed and dragged out.

“He pulled me down and I went face-first into the concrete,” he said.

Entries to the apartments in the complex are raised three steps from the landing.

But Harper told investigators the victim aggressively reached his right hand outward, as if to grab a shirt collar.

In response, Harper, who lived on the second floor below the victim, grabbed the man and pulled him to the ground in an “arm bar” a move used by police where a person’s arm is locked behind them.

Defense attorney Michael Schlueter established that such a maneuver is used for “submission” in his examination of Sgt. Akira Edmoundson, one of the responding officers.

The victim said he was held in that position for a while without struggling.

“I was afraid of causing more mayhem if I moved,” he said, adding he could feel blood on his face and finally asked to sit up and Harper released him.

Harper called for police and medics and the two men waited until they arrived, according to police. After officers arrived, Edmoundson talked to Harper, who said he’d gone upstairs in response to loud noises.

When he was at the door he identified himself as a police officer, Harper told Edmoundson, which the victim denied.

In total, the victim suffered a broken nose, a cut above his right eye that needed six stitches, bruising to his right eye and bruising to his arm.

Harper suffered an abrasion on his right forearm.

Another point of disagreement was how much the victim had been drinking. He testified he had two or three gin and tonics, whereas Detective Jeremy Lewis said the victim’s initial testimony was four to five drinks. Lewis added that the victim still smelled like alcohol when he interviewed him, about five and a half hours after the incident.

The exact nature of Harper’s medical condition, which led to his hospitalization in Hilo for four days, was not explored during the hearing. He’d checked into the hospital that night after the altercation.

In his arguments against a finding of probable cause, Schlueter argued, “The state has failed to meet its burden here.”

That’s in part because there’s no proof that Harper was intentionally, knowingly or recklessly causing an injury, as described by law.

“This was at best confusion,” he said, and Harper was concerned, in part because there was a death on that floor in the previous week.

A hearing is scheduled for 11:30 a.m. March 17 in front of Judge Ronald Ibarra.