A Circuit Court jury Friday found a 26-year-old Schofield Barracks soldier guilty of second-degree attempted murder in the 2012 stabbing of a woman in Waikiki, the Honolulu prosecutor’s office said.
Solomon Battle was tried for the second time in the Dec. 23, 2012, attack of a prostitute in Waikiki.
Circuit Judge Rom Trader will sentence Battle on June 28 to life in prison with the possibility of parole, the prosecutor’s office said in a news release Friday.
The judge declared a mistrial in March 2015 after a state expert inadvertently read the jury a portion of the victim’s statement to police, which was disallowed because she refused to participate in the first trial.
The victim testified in the second trial, telling the jury Battle stabbed her repeatedly in the neck while in a stairwell after trying to arrange a date with her, the prosecutor’s office said.
She sustained wounds to her head, neck, face, shoulder, chest, abdomen, leg, buttocks and back.
Police found Battle hiding in a women’s restroom stall at a nearby hotel. They found his hands and clothes covered in blood, court documents said.
Police arrested Battle, an Army private, in December 2012, and he was held in lieu of $100,000 bail.
Police described the victim at the time as being in her early to mid-20s.
Witnesses said they saw the two walking together in Waikiki sometime before 3:24 a.m. Dec. 23, 2012. They heard the woman scream and saw a man fleeing from the stairwell.
In the first trial, Battle’s lawyer said the victim agreed to have sex with the off-duty soldier but later attacked him when she learned he had only $40. His lawyer also claimed Battle has permanent damage to the part of the brain that controls impulses.
