LIHUE — For the third time this year, sentencing has been delayed for James Pflueger.
It was rescheduled for Sept. 17.
The retired car dealer pleaded no contest in July to first-degree reckless endangerment, a felony, for his role in the deadly 2006 Ka Loko dam disaster on Kauai’s North Shore.
After a medical condition kept him from traveling to Kauai in January and April, Pflueger was scheduled to appear in Kauai’s Fifth Circuit Court on Thursday, but a surgical procedure will prevent him from appearing, his attorney, William McCorriston, wrote in an email Monday.
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. 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 an emailed statement Monday, Bruce Fehring, who lost a daughter, son-in-law and 2-year-old grandson in the incident, expressed his frustration with the additional delay.
“A far wiser man than I once said that ‘Justice is how a community displays its love for itself,’” he wrote. “Unfortunately, the State of Hawaii appears to fail to understand that timeliness is an important element of true justice and of its true love and self-respect. I, for one, would be happy to fly to Oahu for a sentencing hearing, and to accommodate Mr. Pflueger’s many alleged infirmities.”
The sentencing will go before Chief Judge Randal Valenciano.
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.
