Man charged in beating death makes first court appearance
Mar. 23—A 23-year-old man charged with fatally beating his 64-year-old landlord allegedly stomped on the victim's head and chest multiple times because the landlord was going to evict him from an apartment in the Ala Moana area.
A 23-year-old man charged with fatally beating his 64-year-old landlord allegedly stomped on the victim's head and chest multiple times because the landlord was going to evict him from an apartment in the Ala Moana area.
Kendall T. Gray made his initial court appearance Wednesday before Judge Myron Takemoto at Honolulu District Court via video conference from the courthouse cellblock after prosecutors charged him Tuesday with second-degree murder. The victim was identified in court documents as Alvin A. Matsumoto.
Gray is being held at the Oahu Community Correctional Center in lieu of $1 million bail.
Second-degree murder carries a sentence of life in prison with the possibility of parole.
The deadly beating occurred Sunday afternoon at Six Twenty Sheridan, a five-story residential building at 620 Sheridan St.
Honolulu police reported responding to a "defibrillator-type " call just before 3 :30 p.m. and found Matsumoto on the sidewalk "bleeding profusely " from his head and unresponsive.
Honolulu Emergency Medical Services personnel treated Matsumoto and took him in critical condition to The Queen's Medical Center, where he later died.
Police said the assailant fled in a black Nissan sedan after the attack.
Witness Shawn Giles said he saw a man dragging the victim down the concrete steps fronting the apartment building Sunday afternoon, and said the assailant then placed the victim on a lava rock retaining wall before fleeing in a black sedan.
Police in court documents indicated arrangements were made with Gray to meet police officers that night on Hopaka Street—a short distance from Sheridan Street. Officers of the District 1 Crime Reduction Unit met Gray and arrested him at 7 :40 p.m. on suspicion of second-degree murder.
A police officer reviewed video surveillance footage that showed Matsumoto lying on the bottom of the stairway with a man standing over him. The video then showed the man "stomp on Matsumoto's head /chest area multiple times while he laid motionless " within the stairwell, police said. It also showed the man dragging the victim out of the hallway of the building and toward the sidewalk.
At one point in the footage, the video showed the man police later identified as Gray looking directly into the surveillance camera.
Court documents said Matsumoto texted a witness Sunday that he was going to evict Gray from unit 206.
Matsumoto had filed a complaint against Gray in December 2022 claiming he and a women on their rental agreement were in default. The one-year agreement was signed on Aug. 19 for a one-bedroom, one-bathroom 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 pretrial conference that he was "on the Big Island and moving out mid-March, about March 19, 2023."
According to Judiciary spokesperson Jan Kagehiro, the court ordered a writ of possession effective March 20 to evict the tenants from the unit by agreement of the parties.
The pretrial conference was continued to April.
