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The Department of Public Safety director failed to explain why DPS personnel placed a wounded inmate, shot Friday on a Kalihi street by a corrections officer, into a van and returned him to jail rather than render aid and wait for an ambulance. Read more

The Department of Public Safety director failed to explain why DPS personnel placed a wounded inmate, shot Friday on a Kalihi street by a corrections officer, into a van and returned him to jail rather than render aid and wait for an ambulance.

“Once shot, he was handcuffed and thrown into a van and not given CPR or first aid,” Liz Rees said Monday. She was one of about a dozen people who Wednesday protested recent shootings involving law enforcement officers.

The move also has some questioning DPS Director Nolan Espinda’s recounting of the escape, including how the 47-year-old managed to flee through secured doors and gates from the Oahu Community Correctional Center.

Maurice Arrisgado Jr. was treated at the jail by medical staff, then taken by an Emergency Medical Services ambulance to a hospital, where he died, Espinda said. He was the son of former longtime Deputy Prosecutor Maurice Arrisgado.

The inmate’s underlying crime was a second-degree theft in 2016, a Class C felony. He had no other convictions.

A Crime Reduction Unit tried to arrest him Feb. 26 on a probation revocation warrant — increased to $500,000 from $50,000 — for failure to appear in court. Police alleged Arrisgado tried to stab two CRU officers and arrested him on suspicion of attempted murder.

But police released him on the attempted murder and held him only on the warrant.

“An escape is a major mistake,” Espinda said Saturday. Arrisgado had been in the intake area after returning from court, his leg shackles removed, waiting to return to his cell, he said.

Thomas Copp, incarcerated at OCCC for a year in the ’80s, said, “It doesn’t seem humanly possible” to run through about five doors while the gate is closing and run 60 yards to escape.

When transporting inmates back to OCCC, the truck goes through a gate to the sally port, the gates close and you walk into the building through three to five secured electronic doors to the intake area, where shackles and clothes are removed.

“I never heard of a person escaping from the intake center after being returned from court,” he said. “Espinda said it was a mistake, but it’s a lot of mistakes going through all the electronic doors. … It doesn’t make sense.”

“Why wasn’t first aid rendered right then and there if he’s bleeding profusely from a gunshot wound?” Copp asked. “You’re messing with the crime scene. They took him back as if he was alive. Minutes were wasted by taking him back.”

Nicholas Chagnon, a University of Hawaii lecturer, with a criminology background, said, “It seems quite odd that this man was able to sprint out of a gate that easily. … I would think that perhaps DPS could explain how it is possible given the layout and how they’re safeguarding that this couldn’t happen again.”

Arrisgado was shot in the upper torso at 6:10 p.m. near Kaumualii Street and Puuhale Road, and died at 6:43 p.m.

Police, the Department of the Attorney General and DPS Internal Affairs are investigating the escape and shooting.

Hawaii is one of 22 states where it’s legal to use deadly force to stop an unarmed prison escapee, Amnesty International, Hawaii chapter co-coordinator Beatriz Cantelma said after Wednesday’s protest. She said the United States must reform its use of deadly-force laws.