Select an option below to continue reading this premium story.
Already a Honolulu Star-Advertiser subscriber? Log in now to continue reading.
A woman who admitted making a telephone bomb threat last year that forced the evacuation of the Chevron refinery at Campbell Industrial Park apologized for her actions in U.S. District Court on Tuesday.
"I am sorry," said Tiare Sunny Kuehnl. "It will never happen again."
U.S. District Chief Judge Susan Oki Mollway accepted Kuehnl’s apology, then sentenced her to 21/2 years in prison.
In February, when she pleaded guilty, Kuehnl, 33, said she made the bomb threat Feb. 22, 2013, because her then-boyfriend was scheduled to take a drug test that day and was afraid he was going to lose his job of 13 years.
She later said in a letter to Mollway that her boyfriend worked at a business near the refinery and knew that his workplace would also be evacuated if there was a bomb threat at the Chevron facility. She said her boyfriend drove her to the Walmart in Mililani to make the 911 call.
In the letter Kuehnl said she and her boyfriend had been smoking methamphetamine and had not slept or eaten for two or three days. After she had a good night’s sleep, Kuehnl said, she realized what a stupid thing she had done. And when her boyfriend continued to use drugs, she said she checked herself in to a residential drug treatment program.
Kuehnl said that while she was taking part in the program, she learned that the FBI was looking for her. She said she called the FBI, her probation officer and the state sheriff deputy responsible for her arrest warrants and told them what had happened.
Kuehnl was on probation for two state burglary convictions when she made the bomb threat and had been arrested at least four times for violating the terms of her probation. When U.S. Department of Homeland Security officials later caught up with her, she was serving jail time at Oahu Community Correctional Center for a probation violation.
