State Hospital escapee returns to Honolulu
COURTESY STATE DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC SAFETY
Escaped hospital patient Randall Saito appears in a mug shot taken today in Honolulu after arriving from California.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Escaped hospital patient Randall Saito sits in inmate visitor’s booth of San Joaquin County Jail before a scheduled court hearing in French Camp, Calif. on Nov. 17.
Hawaii State Hospital escapee Randall Saito arrived in Honolulu today under the custody of federal marshals.
Saito, 59, arrived at about 2:40 p.m., according to the U.S. Marshals Service.
His arraignment is set for Tuesday in Circuit Court before Judge Colette Garibaldi for a state felony escape charge. He is being held at the Oahu Community Correctional Center in lieu of $500,000 bail.
The State Attorney General’s Office is expected to file a motion Friday to request a new bail amount.
State Attorney General Douglas Chin said if Saito posts bail, he will be transported back to the State Hospital and not released to the community.
Chin said state officials appreciate the cooperation of the San Joaquin District Attorney’s Office and law enforcement agencies in California.
“It took a lot of effort and work with those agencies to be able to extradite him back to Hawaii,” Chin said. “We appreciate that they took their role very seriously and understood how important it was for the state of Hawaii to have him answer to the charge.”
The felony escape charge carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison.
Saito was turned over from San Joaquin County Jail in California to federal marshals on Tuesday morning, said Det. Dave Konecny, spokesman for the San Joaquin County Sheriff’s Office in Stockton, Calif.
Federal marshals transported him from California to Hawaii on a non-commercial flight. Typically, offenders are extradited to Hawaii on a commercial flight.
Chin said, “In this instance, we made the decision to bring him back on a non-commercial flight to avoid any concerns from the public about him being on the same plane with them.”
On Nov. 12, Saito walked off hospital grounds, took a taxi to the airport and boarded a charter flight to Maui. He then boarded another flight to San Jose, Calif.
The State Hospital called 911 to report Saito missing about eight to 10 hours after he escaped.
Deputy sheriffs captured Saito three days later in Stockton, Calif., after they received a tip from a taxi company.
Saito was acquitted of murder by reason of insanity in 1981 after he shot and stabbed a 29-year-old woman in the Ala Moana Center parking lot.
He was diagnosed with sexual sadism and necrophilia and committed to the State Hospital in 1981.
