State worker faces online sex charge

A 41-year-old state employee is scheduled to appear in Honolulu District Court today to answer to a charge of arranging to meet and have sex with a teenage girl he met on the Internet.

Russell Loo was charged with first-degree electronic enticement of a child. He was being held on $40,000 bail.

Police said Loo went online and arranged to meet who he thought was a 15-year-old girl for sex. The "girl" was a police officer.

Loo was arrested when he showed up at the arranged meeting place at Waiau District Park at about 11 p.m. Sunday.

He is a general laborer II with the state Department of Transportation Airports Division and has been a volunteer with the city Department of Emergency Management’s reserve corps program since 2001, officials said.

Reserve corps volunteers are dispatched during emergencies to fill in for police officers, making door-to-door evacuation notifications and conducting roadblocks and traffic controls.

Loo was not acting in his capacity as a volunteer at the time of his arrest and has been placed on administrative leave as standard procedure, said Department of Emergency Management spokesman John Cummings.

"This is an isolated incident and should in no way reflect on the excellent work of our reserve corps volunteers," Cummings said.

Fender repairmen robbed at gunpoint

Two teenagers who offered to repair a dented fender were kidnapped and robbed at gunpoint in Waipahu on Monday, police said.

The incident began at 1:15 p.m. when two men, 18 and 17, saw a vehicle with a damaged fender and offered to fix it for $100, police said.

The driver of the vehicle accused the two victims of causing additional damage and told the teenagers to get into the car, police said.

The driver then drove them to another location, pulled out a handgun and demanded money, police said.

Two accomplices, a man and a woman who were also in the car, took money and a cell phone from the victims, police said.

One of the men punched the 17-year-old in the face before they drove away.

Fisherman apparent drowning victim

A 65-year-old fisherman apparently drowned yesterday while setting a fishing net several hundred feet offshore of Kapaa, a Kauai County spokeswoman said.

The Hanamaulu man started drifting away while setting the net with two friends about 300 feet off Hotel Coral Reef about 4:45 p.m., said Kauai spokeswoman Mary Daubert.

His friends continued searching after losing sight of him, and one swam to shore for help.

Police officers and firefighters conducted an extensive ground, water and air search; a bystander found the man floating face down off Pono Kai Resort.

Firefighters performed CPR on the man until paramedics arrived, then took him to Wilcox Memorial Hospital, where he died.