Man will face jury trial in sex assault case

A city worker who was depicted on video allegedly propositioning a transgender probationer for sexual favors will face a jury trial in Circuit Court.

Harold Villanueva Jr., 47, was arrested in July on a charge of fourth-degree sex assault. His lawyer asked for a jury trial when his client appeared in court Tuesday before Ewa Beach District Court Judge Michael Marr, who set a Nov. 7 trial date.

Police began investigating Villanueva after his accuser, Makana Milho, 21, secretly recorded and posted to Facebook about 30 minutes of conversations that she alleges were between her and Villanueva, who was supervising her court-ordered community service.

Milho, who was fulfilling the terms of her probation, had been ordered to complete six days of community service to get a theft charge expunged from her record. She said her fifth day was interrupted when the work-site supervisor acted inappropriately.

One of the videos went viral, garnering 197,000 Facebook views, 2,042 shares and 1,350 comments within days. Two others received thousands of views and hundreds of comments.

In the viral video, a man can be heard telling Milho that she can go home early if she will perform sexual favors. Milho also alleged that he tried to hold her hand and pinched and slapped her buttocks while she was cleaning park bathrooms.

Villanueva, a groundskeeper in the Department of Parks and Recreation, has been placed on unpaid administrative leave pending an investigation. He has worked for the city since 2002.

HAWAII ISLAND

Captive alala’s call differs from those in wild, researcher finds

HILO >> Researchers studying Hawaii’s last remaining native crow species say the call of the alala has changed since being in captivity.

Ann Tanimoto, who graduated from the University of Hawaii at Hilo in 2014, spent months studying alalas that had been held in an aviary. She found that wild alalas have higher call rates and produce more alarm and territorial calls than their captive counterparts, the Hawaii Tribune-Herald reported.

“We think this is because they need to communicate back and forth with each other (in the wild),” Tanimoto said.

Tanimoto’s research was part of the UH Tropical Conservation Biology and Environmental Science Program’s multiyear project on climate change, which has been awarded $1 million annually since at least 2009. The grant has been provided by the Centers for Research Excellence in Science and Technology program at the National Science Foundation.

The money has helped fund other projects similar to Tanimoto’s, according to a UH-Hilo news release. Some students have focused on the “anthropogenic change and population decline on social behavior in animals,” while others have examined functions of symbiotic organisms in Hawaii’s plants and animals.

About eight students have participated in the research each year, according to biology professor Patrick Hart.

Angela Beck, 30, is studying the Hawaiian honeycreeper, another native bird. She said she is cataloging the bird’s “different songs and sounds.” “No one has really looked at their repertoire in that much detail before,” Beck said.

The CREST grant money — awarded in five-year cycles and renewed each year — is scheduled to end in 2019. Hart said he hopes to see the program secure long-term funding so students can continue climate change research.