LIHUE — County prosecutors are recommending 80 days in jail for a California man who pleaded no contest Tuesday to charges that he got behind the wheel while high on a cocktail of powerful drugs, caused an accident, left the scene and ignored orders from police to pull over until he crashed into a second car.
Michael Kelly, 42, was charged with eight counts for his conduct in the 2016 incident. Prosecutors say he ran into another car on Ahukini Road, “got out of vehicle he was driving, said something to the effect of ‘Ahh, only the tail light,’ got back in his car and left.”
Police attempted to pull Kelly over in Kapaa, but he “refused to stop and did not stop until he struck another vehicle near the McDonald’s,” county Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Ramsey Ross wrote in a motion asking the judge presiding over Kelly’s case not to let him out of custody.
Kelly didn’t have a driver’s license or insurance, and police said his blood tested positive for six different kinds of drugs, both prescription and illicit — benzodiazapine, amphetamines, cannabinoids, cocaine opiates and oxycodone.
According to prosecutors, the primary reason it took nearly three years to resolve the case against Kelly is because he jumped bail, missed a half-dozen court hearings over the next two years and went to his home state of California, where in 2018 he was arrested once again for driving under the influence, causing an accident and fleeing the scene.
Kelly was arrested three more times in the six months that followed. A few days after the 2018 hit-and-run, he was arrested for carrying a loaded firearm in public and driving on a suspended license. Police picked him up for drug possession and driving under the influence a month later and five months after that for resisting an officer and evading police.
Kelly was convicted earlier this year in a California court on the firearm possession and evading police charges. He has another case pending in San Diego for heroin possession.
Kauai prosecutors offered to drop six of the eight counts against Kelly in exchange for a plea of no contest to a felony for not stopping his car for police and a misdemeanor for fleeing the scene of an accident. The felony is normally punishable by up to five years jail, but Kelly’s prior convictions make him eligible for a double sentence, meaning he could get 11 years in jail and as much as $12,000 in fines.
Prosecutors recommended a much more lenient sentence, asking the judge to give Kelly 80 days in jail with credit for time served. If the judge follows that recommendation, Kelly won’t have to spend any more time behind bars for this particular set of crimes.
He spent two days in police custody after his arrest in 2016 and another 78 days between Aug. 15, when he was extradited to Kauai from California, and Tuesday, when the judge granted his request to be released from custody on the condition that he promise to come to his next court date.
Kelly is scheduled to be sentened in February.
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Caleb Loehrer, staff writer, can be reached at 245-0441 or cloehrer@thegardenisland.com.
