The lawyer of a man accused of driving a car into a group of young people, hitting at least three of them before fleeing, says prosecutors rushed to charge his client before doing a complete investigation into what happened.
An Oahu grand jury returned an indictment Wednesday charging Malik Morton with multiple attempted murder counts as the alleged driver of a car that injured two people, one critically, at an Ewa Beach house party on May 17.
Morton, 20, of Wahiawa remains in custody at Oahu Community Correctional Center. Circuit Judge Richard Perkins confirmed his bail at $1 million.
Deputy Prosecutor Chastity Imamura said the impact threw 18-year-old Alisha Brown into the air. She remains in an induced coma at the Queen’s Medical Center.
The indictment identifies Brown as one of the victims of the first-degree attempted murder and the victim of one of the second-degree attempted murder charges. The indictment identifies the other victim in the first- and second-degree attempted murder charges by the initials R.I. Honolulu police have identified him as 17-year-old Ryan Ilar.
Imamura told Perkins that just before the car hit anyone, Morton and his friends got into an argument with other people at the party.
“A fight broke out and the defendant and a couple of his friends were getting assaulted. A few of the defendant’s friends got into one of their cars and drove away,” Imamura said.
Morton’s lawyer, Victor Bakke, said: “So that’s obviously a self-defense issue that (police and prosecutors) should be investigating. I don’t understand how they’re ignoring that at this point and rushing to judgment.”
Bakke says he doesn’t know everything that happened because the prosecutor has yet to respond to his request for the police reports in the case. He said he was looking forward to hearing from witnesses in a preliminary hearing scheduled for Wednesday afternoon but the prosecutor instead took the case to a grand jury.
He said Morton’s bail is so high because prosecutors convinced judges that Morton is a flight risk.
Imamura told Perkins that Morton has a plane ticket to fly to San Diego on Friday. Bakke says Morton is not a flight risk and that Morton and his family had planned months ago to go to California to visit Disneyland.
