LIHUE — Day three of a manslaughter trial featured testimony from a tow truck driver who watched a young woman pass away in the seat of her car, an emergency room doctor who testified about the suspect’s delusions of grandeur and a restaurant owner who stepped outside his shop and saw a tire rolling in the street.
Eight witnesses took the stand Wednesday in the trial of Cody Safadago, a man charged with manslaughter, negligent homicide, car theft and driving while intoxicated, allegedly causing a head-on collision that killed a Kapaa woman, Kayla Huddy-Lemn.
Shane Silva, a tow-truck driver, was standing in the parking lot of the old Waipouli Variety Store where he had been called to unlock a customer’s car late on April 27, 2017. Behind him, he heard a humming noise that quickly grew louder.
“I just heard this noise coming really fast,” Silva said in Judge Randal Valenciano’s Fifth Circuit courtroom. “He was running over the reflectors.”
Silva said he caught a brief glimpse of the driver, a man he described as bearded and “kinda Caucasian-looking.”
About a mile after it passed Silva, the white Nissan pickup speeding south on Kuhio Highway crashed head-on into a sedan driven by Huddy-Lemn, a 19-year-old girl on her way home from work.
Silva drove to the scene, where he said he found Safadago, 48, sitting on the ground next to the truck with cuts and bruises on his face.
Silva was more concerned with the young girl in the driver’s seat of the crumpled Mazda a few hundred feet away.
“I was talking with her for a little while, and she had blood coming out of her mouth,” he said. “She was moving. She wasn’t talking.”
Eventually, he said, she stopped moving.
Jordan Bertulfo, a cargo agent on a graveyard shift at Lihue Airport, testified that he was heading to work that night when the white Nissan truck came flying past him, “going at least 80” in the 25 mph zone fronting Longs Drugs in Waipouli.
“It got super-close,” he said. “I could feel my truck move.”
By the time he had driven just a hundred feet down the road, he said the truck’s tail lights were already almost out of view.
He lost sight of the truck at a bend in the road, and rounding the bend, he came upon the accident.
“I could see steam in the middle of the road, and I was wondering what that was,” he said.
“I pulled over to see if I could help.”
He spoke briefly with officers who arrived on the scene and gave a more detailed statement over the phone the next day, but hadn’t been able to get a look at the driver of the truck as it passed.
Aaron Leikam, owner of Streetburger, also took the stand.
His restaurant stands directly in front of the area where the white Nissan truck came skidding to a halt.
Leikam told the jurors he was in the back of the restaurant when he heard a commotion outside and his employees called him for help.
He saw the wrecked truck and knew the accident must have happened just moments before because, as he explained in court, “the tire was still rolling in the street.”
Leikam said he was approached by Safadago, who walked up from the direction of the truck, asking him for a lighter.
“His face was kinda beat up. His hair was kinda disheveled,” Leikam told the jury, saying Safadago appeared intoxicated and “almost on the verge of being beligerent.”
Leikam said he had unsuccessfully been attempting to get the drunken man to leave when a police officer showed up and Safadago ran away down the highway.
The emergency-room physician at Wilcox Medical Center gave an account of Safadago’s behavior later on in the evening.
“He was cuffed. He was growling like a dog — very strange,” Dr. Allon Amitai told the jury.
Amitai testified that Safadago told him he had been walking by the side of the road and was struck by a car but had no injuries consistent with that story.
“He had delusions of grandeur,” Amitai said
“He was talking about how wonderful he was — how he could be hit by a car and walk away.”
Amitai went into greater detail during his grand jury testimony when he said his initial impression of Safadago was that “he was pretending to be crazy.”
“He seemed to be trying to channel a Hollywood movie psychopath,” Amitai told the grand jury, according to a transcript of the proceedings. “He was kind of growling and snarling and talking about how nobody would believe him and how he had super powers.”
Amitai also testified Wednesday that Safadago’s blood tests showed elevated levels of alcohol. According to court documents in the case, his blood alcohol content was over four times the legal driving limit.
Jurors got another glimpse at Safadago’s behavior that night from footage from the body camera of his arresting police officer.
When KPD patrol officer Michael Buratti — he is now retired — arrived on the scene, other officers were already attending to the woman in the wrecked car, so he drove down the road to check out the other vehicle involved.
As he pulled up, he saw two men in a verbal altercation outside JC’s Flowers.
He yelled out, “Is that the guy from the truck?” One man responded, “Yeah, I think so.” Safadago began to run south along the highway. Buratti caught up with him shortly, and a scuffle began.
“You’re under arrest!” Buratti can be heard saying on the video.
“No. You’re under arrest!” Safadago replied. He repeatedly insisted, “I don’t have a truck.”
“You’re gonna die,” Safadago said at one point as Buratti wrestled him to the ground and began putting on the handcuffs. “I’m a killer, bro.”
“I’m sure you are,” Buratti said.
•••
Caleb Loehrer, staff writer, can be reached at 245-0441 or cloehrer@thegardenisland.com.
