A man charged with stabbing a 66-year-old woman to death in Kalihi last week faces a potential sentence of life in prison.
According to police records, Alexis Aquino, 23, entered a convenience store on School Street in Kalihi on Nov. 4. Witnesses told officers that he picked an alcoholic beverage from a cooler, opened it and began drinking it in the store.
Celeste Gusman, 66, confronted Aquino and told him to pay for his drink. Aquino then reportedly swore at her before drawing a knife and stabbing her repeatedly in the neck.
An employee at the store reported that Aquino then approached her and requested a vape behind the counter before the witness fled.
When police officers arrived, they found Aquino still at the store, allegedly holding his beverage and a small kitchen knife, covered in blood. When Aquino refused orders to drop the weapon, officers subdued him with a “less-lethal conductive energy weapon,” according to a police report.
Gusman was pronounced dead shortly afterward.
A grand jury indicted Aquino for second-degree murder and first-degree robbery on Tuesday. While the maximum possible sentence for second-degree murder is life imprisonment with the possibility of parole, Hawai‘i statutes allow for enhanced sentences for offenses found to be “especially heinous, atrocious or cruel, manifesting exceptional depravity”; based on Gusman’s age, the grand jury found probably cause to support an extended sentence.
Therefore, Aquino faces a maximum possible sentence of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.
This was Aquino’s first criminal charge in Hawai‘i.
Aquino is being held without bail at the O‘ahu Community Correctional Center. A preliminary hearing in his case is scheduled for Thursday, Nov. 12.
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