Defendant says victim was alive when he left her

The man accused of killing a 25-year-old visitor from New Mexico in Waikiki two years ago said he left the woman alive at the beach because she accused him of having her purse stolen while they were having sex in the ocean.

Aaron Susa, 33, is on trial in state court for the Oct. 2, 2009, death of Bryanna Antone, whose nude body washed up on the shoreline near the Royal Hawaiian Hotel.

Former Honolulu Medical Examiner Gayle Suzuki said Antone drowned. She also said "strangulation-type injuries" on Antone’s neck and a blood alcohol content of 0.222 contributed to her death.

Suzuki said the thyroid cartilage in Antone’s throat was broken and that Antone also had muscle and skin bruises.

Susa said he and Antone at first had sex on the beach but stopped because they heard someone walking nearby. So he said they took off their clothes and went into the water where they swam, splashed around and continued having sex.

While playing in the water, Susa said he scratched his chest on the sand when he dived off a rock wall into shallow water, then scratched his shoulder when he fell on some rocks.

When they got out of the water, he said they noticed Antone’s purse was not where they had left it.

As they were getting dressed, Susa said Antone was angry about her purse and kept snapping at him.

"It was clear to me that she was kinda like blaming me, saying that I might have set her up," he said.

Susa said he told Antone to calm down and that these things happen.

At that point, Susa said, Antone grabbed his flesh on his chest and left hip. He said he removed her hands from him, but she grabbed him again after he said he called her a bitch.

"I just told her she was crazy, and I left," he said.

Susa said he headed toward Hilton Hawaiian Village and Antone walked off, looking for her purse, in the opposite direction.

After sleeping on the beach at the Hilton, Susa said he called a friend who told him police were looking for him.

He had left an envelope with personal information documents at the beach where Antone’s body washed up.

Susa said he didn’t know why police were looking for him, but didn’t want to go back to jail a third time. He has prior convictions for drug possession and breaking into a motor vehicle.

He said he tried to commit suicide on the day police arrested him by ingesting and injecting Drano into his veins because he couldn’t get heroin. At that point he said he had been up for four days, was paranoid and hallucinating because he had taken methamphetamine and believed gangsters were out to kill him.