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City prosecutors say a 20-year-old motorist accused of killing his girlfriend, their 1-year-old daughter and his cousin in a head-on traffic collision in Nanakuli in December was driving drunk.
An Oahu grand jury returned an indictment Tuesday charging Faaolataga Kitiona with three counts of negligent homicide and one count of negligent injury.
State Circuit Judge Richard Perkins set Kitiona’s bail at $25,000.
Deputy Prosecutor Chastity Imamura told Perkins that the alcohol content of Kitiona’s blood two hours after the crash was 0.13. The legal threshold for drunken driving is 0.08.
The people who died in the Dec. 28 crash near the Kahe Point power plant on Farrington Highway were 18-year-old Talofa Mene, her daughter Kawehikulani Ribeiro-Kitiona and 19-year-old Sagato Prince Segi. All three were passengers in a car driven by Kitiona.
Honolulu police said Kitiona was speeding while driving east on Farrington Highway when his car crossed the centerline and crashed into a pickup truck traveling in the opposite direction. The impact broke the car in half.
Mene, Ribeiro-Kitiona and Segi died at the scene.
An ambulance took Kitiona in critical condition to a hospital.
The four female occupants of the pickup — the 42-year-old driver and her passengers, ages 49, 14 and 3 — went to the hospital in serious condition.
Police arrested Kitiona in January after he was discharged from the hospital but released him pending investigation.
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COURTESY HPD