LIHUE — A medical condition will keep retired car dealer James Pflueger from traveling to Kauai next week for sentencing. Pflueger was scheduled to appear in Kauai’s 5th Circuit Court Jan. 23 after pleading no contest in July to first-degree
LIHUE — A medical condition will keep retired car dealer James Pflueger from traveling to Kauai next week for sentencing.
Pflueger was scheduled to appear in Kauai’s 5th Circuit Court Jan. 23 after pleading no contest in July to first-degree reckless endangerment, a felony, for his role in the 2006 Ka Loko dam failure.
On Monday, Pflueger initially said he could not discuss the medical condition, but that “it’s really bad.”
“I can’t fly for six weeks,” he said during a phone interview.
He later disclosed that the medical condition was related to his leg.
“Every day is a good day when I wake up and I’m this old,” he said. “I’m an 87-year-old man that’s worn out.”
His attorney, William McCorriston, confirmed his client was unable to make the trip and that the sentencing has been rescheduled for April.
Pflueger, of Honolulu, is charged with tampering with a spillway around the dam on his 33-acre property in Kilauea. The dam breached in March 2006, sending a wall of water downhill that killed seven people.
In an emailed statement Monday, Bruce Fehring, who lost a daughter, son-in-law and 2-year-old grandson in the incident, expressed his disappointment with the delay.
“I am uncertain what may, or may not, be wrong with Jimmy Pflueger’s health, but, speaking on behalf of myself and my family, although we remain traumatized and broken-hearted, we planned on being at the scheduled sentencing hearing,” he wrote. “I doubt the problem is with Mr. Pflueger’s guts, as it appears he is lacking entirely in that department. Otherwise, he would not be hiding for all these years behind his lawyers and doctors, and would have, long ago, owned up to what he did to the Ka Loko Dam emergency spillway.”
The state is expected to ask the court to sentence Pflueger to a five-year term of felony probation with conditions that include up to one year in jail.
In July, Deputy Attorney Generals Vince Kanemoto and Simeona Marian presented a second case that has Pflueger’s company, Pacific 808 Properties LLC, pleading no contest to seven manslaughter charges.
McCorriston acted as the authorized representative of Pacific 808, formerly known as Pflueger Properties, and entered no contest pleas to manslaughter in the second case as the appointed representative.
The plea deal asks the court to assess a $50,000 fine for each of the seven victims. The prosecutors have asked for the fine to be paid specifically to the state Department of Land and Natural Resources for purposes of dam safety inspections.
The dam breach killed Alan Gareth Dingwall, Daniel Jay Arroyo, Rowan Grey Makana Fehring-Dingwall, Aurora Solveig Fehring, Christina Michelle McNees and her unborn baby, Timothy Wendell Noonan Jr., and Carl Wayne Rotstein.
• Chris D’Angelo, environmental reporter, can be reached at 245-0441 or cdangelo@thegardenisland.com.
