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Jury finds man guilty of sex assault of girl, 10, at Ala Moana arcade

JAMM AQUINO / JAQUINO@STARADVERTISER.COM

Jason Nolen, seen here in Circuit Court Monday, was found guilty Tuesday of the attempted kidnapping and sexual assault of a 9-year-old girl in the Lucky Strike Social arcade at Ala Moana Center in March.

A state jury deliberated for less than four hours Tuesday before convicting a 45-year-old man of molesting and trying to abduct a 9-year-old girl from an Ala Moana Center arcade.

The jurors found Jason Dee Nolen guilty of third-­degree sexual assault and attempted kidnapping. He faces up to five years in prison for the sexual assault and up to 10 years for the attempted kidnapping at sentencing in March.

The now-10-year-old girl testified she was playing video games in Lucky Strike Social on March 19 when a man kept poking her in the butt cheek. When she went into the Land Lost Adventure game, the man came up from behind her, picked her up by the crotch and tried to carry her off, the girl said.

She said the man let her go after she kicked him. The victim identified a man in Lucky Strike and Ala Moana security video as the person who assaulted her but was not able to say in court that the man in the video is Nolen.

Defense lawyer Emmanuel Guerrero did not present any witnesses but told jurors the man in the video is not Nolen.

The man in the video has long hair in a ponytail and a short beard and mustache. When police officers arrested Nolen at his apartment in Downtown Honolulu 12 daysafter the incident, he had short hair and was clean-shaven. When his trial started last week, Nolen had long hair, a long beard and a long mustache.

Deputy prosecutor Kristen Yamamoto told jurors that if they looked closely at the video, they will see that it is Nolen. They apparently agreed.