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Former Honolulu police Sgt. Anson Kimura is going to jail for two months for accidentally shooting a woman in a bar while off duty.
The 60-day jail term is part of a four-year probation sentence state Circuit Judge Colette Garibaldi handed Kimura on Wednesday for second-degree assault. Kimura, 57, pleaded guilty in August to recklessly causing serious bodily injury.
Kimura remains free on $5,000 bail. Garibaldi is giving him until Monday to turn himself in.
She also ordered Kimura to perform 200 hours of community service and to stay away from the South King Street bar where the shooting occurred, and prohibited him from contacting the victim.
Honolulu police said Kimura and the woman, an employee of the bar, were friends, and that Kimura accidentally shot her in the stomach in April 2015. Kimura, a 25-year Honolulu Police Department veteran, retired from HPD the following month in the midst of the department’s internal investigation into the shooting.
Deputy Prosecutor Ayla Weiss said the bullet is lodged in the woman’s lower vertebrae and will remain there for the rest of her life.
Kimura’s lawyer, Tommy Otake, said Kimura was checking his personal weapon, a revolver, to see whether it was loaded. He said Kimura partially squeezed the trigger, then pulled back the hammer to see whether there was a round in front of it.
“He held it, pulled down on the trigger and was slowly going to put the hammer back, but it slipped and it fired,” Otake said.
Weiss said the victim told police that Kimura’s colleagues tried to persuade him to put the gun away before it discharged.
HPD policy prohibits officers from possessing firearms while drinking alcohol.
The department says an internal investigation into the actions of the officers who were with Kimura at the bar and those who responded to the shooting is still pending.
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