A Waikiki hotel worker told the state jury in the Aaron Susa murder trial Thursday that he saw a man wrestling and struggling with a woman on the beach just hours before the body of a 25-year-old New Mexico visitor washed up on shore.
Susa is on trial for murder in connection with the Oct. 2, 2009, death of Bryanna Antone.
Antone, her younger brother and her mother were in Hawaii for the American Dental Association’s annual convention. Antone’s mother is a dental assistant. She said the trip was a birthday present to her children.
The autopsy says Antone drowned. It also lists injuries on her neck consistent with applied pressure and acute alcohol intoxication as contributing factors.
A city medical examiner told police Antone had a fractured larynx, or voice box, and bruises on her neck and chest.
Norimitsu Wada-Goode, the overnight room service fry cook at the Royal Hawaiian, said he saw a man and woman lying on the beach fronting the hotel at about 3:30 a.m.
"The guy was on top of the girl," he said.
He said the couple didn’t make any noise, but it appeared the woman was pushing the man away, and he demonstrated how the man was lifting the woman up and down with both hands. He said he later saw a man and woman in the ocean and that one appeared to be chasing the other.
About that same time, Andrew and Sarah Roby said, they were on the beach watching the moon set and spotted someone about 50 to 75 yards into the ocean fronting the Royal Hawaiian. They, too, were in Hawaii for the dental convention.
Sarah Roby said she also saw an irregular-shaped object next to the person in the ocean. She said it wasn’t a surfboard and thought it might be a bag or scuba equipment.
Later, as she and were husband were walking along the beach walkway toward Fort DeRussy, she said, Susa rushed past them wearing shorts but no shirt. Roby said Susa’s body and shorts were wet, and he was breathing heavily as if he had been running.
Susa told police he had sex with Antone in the ocean but they split up, walking in different directions on the beach.
Benjamin Antone said he and his sister met Susa in Waikiki the night before, after they returned from a luau where he and his sister both had four drinks. He said he asked a man on the street where he could get some marijuana, and the man brought them to Susa.
Antone said Susa bought two ounces of marijuana for him, and all four went to the beach to drink vodka and smoke the marijuana. He said the last time he saw his sister was when he left her and Susa on the second-level pool deck of the Ohana West hotel while he and the other man went to get some food.
At about 5:50 a.m. Jill Overstreet, who was also in Hawaii for the dental convention, said she was walking along the beach fronting the Royal Hawaiian with a co-worker when they spotted Bryanna Antone’s nude body on the shoreline.
