Man, 23, charged in fatal beating of Sheridan Street landlord

Prosecutors have charged a 23-year-old man in Sunday’s fatal beating of a 64-year-old man at an apartment building in the Ala Moana area.

Suspect Kendall T. Gray made his initial appearance this morning before Judge Myron Takemoto at Honolulu District Court via video conference from the courthouse cellblock after he was charged Tuesday with second-degree murder. The victim was identified in court documents as Alvin Matsumoto.

Gray’s bail is set at $1 million.

The deadly beating occurred Sunday afternoon at Six Twenty Sheridan, a five-story residential building at the corner of Sheridan Street and Kapiolani Boulevard.

Honolulu police responded to a “defibrillator-type” call on Sheridan Street just before 3:30 p.m. When officers arrived, they found Matsumoto “bleeding profusely” from his head on the sidewalk, police said.

Honolulu Emergency Medical Services personnel treated the victim and took him in critical condition to The Queen’s Medical Center where he died.

Police said investigators found that Matsumoto was attempting to evict Gray’s girlfriend from her unit when the altercation occurred. Police said Gray fled in a black Nissan sedan after he physically assaulted the victim.

Officers of the District 1 Crime Reduction Unit arrested him at Hopaka Street at 7:40 p.m. on suspicion of second-degree murder.

Witness Shawn Giles said he saw a man dragging the victim down the concrete steps fronting the apartment building Sunday afternoon. He said the man then placed the victim on a lava rock retaining wall before fleeing in a black sedan.

Police in court documents said a police officer reviewed video surveillance footage that showed Matsumoto lying on the bottom of the stairway with an unknown man standing over him. The video also showed the man “stomp on Matsumoto’s head/chest area multiple times while he laid motionless” within the stairwell, police said.

Matsumoto had texted a witness Sunday that he was going to evict Gray from unit 206, according to court documents.

He had filed a complaint against Gray and Cheryl Dula in December 2022, claiming the pair defaulted on their rental agreement. The agreement was signed in August for a one-bedroom unit at the Sheridan Street apartment building. In the complaint, Matsumoto claimed he made multiple attempts to collect rent.

Court minutes show Gray told the court at a February pre-trial conference that he was “on the Big Island and moving out mid-March, about March 19, 2023.” The minutes also revealed the court was ordering an “a writ of possession to issue effective March 20.”

The pre-trial conference was continued to April.