LIHUE — A Kekaha gun collector will spend the next month in jail because he could not account for over 20 weapons registered in his name.
Jeremiah Nerpio, 67, was charged with three felonies and two misdemeanors for violating weapons-possession and gun-permit laws. Nerpio could have faced more than 30 years in prison if convicted, but avoided that outcome through plea-bargaining, signing a deal in January that seemingly put him on track to stay out of jail altogether.
Nerpio pleaded no contest to five, slightly-modified charges and, in exchange, prosecutors agreed to request probation instead of incarceration at sentencing, an offer Fifth Circuit Chief Judge Randal Valenciano apparently found too generous.
“You’re spending time in jail,” Valenciano told Nerpio during Thursday’s hearing. “The only question is what.”
Until June 2016, when Kauai police officers arrested a fugitive carrying a firearm registered to Nerpio, the gun enthusiast had never been in any legal trouble beyond a traffic citation.
When police questioned Nerpio about the weapon, he admitted selling the fugitive the gun, according to County Prosecutor Justin Kollar, who explained the transaction was “obviously illegal” because the buyer, a convicted felon, was prohibited from owning or possessing firearms.
Kollar said Nerpio later showed a KPD officer all of his guns as well as a number of homemade silencers that he said he learned how to make from watching videos on the internet. Police soon realized there was further cause for concern.
Nerpio had 36 guns registered to him but only had 15 in his possession at the time, leaving 21 weapons unaccounted for, a discrepancy that initially attracted attention at the federal level.
Kollar said that because of the nature of the case, federal investigators — he didn’t specify which agency — were originally interested but ultimately declined to pursue charges due to “a statute-of-limitations issue,” at which point county prosecutors picked up the case.
The nearly two dozen missing weapons also troubled Valenciano, who spent several minutes scolding Nerpio for being careless, describing him as a firearms trafficker and accusing him of endangering the community and the state.
“You’re basically a gun runner,” Valenciano said. “You’re running guns, and that’s a problem.”
Valenciano said he decided to impose a harsher sentence than the one suggested by prosecutors in order to send a message about the gravity of Nerpio’s crimes.
“That’s where I struggle,” he said. “You don’t grasp the concept of the seriousness of this issue.”
Nerpio’s saving grace may have been the fact that on top of a clean record, he bought and registered all of his weapons legally, a point brought up by his public defense attorney, Stephanie Char, who called her client “a gun aficionado” and said he collects firearms as a hobby.
After announcing Nerpio’s sentence — a month in jail and four years probation — Valenciano said, “The only reason I’m not giving you more is because you are a legitimate gun collector. You put our law enforcement in a really tricky situation. You put our community in a really tricky situation.”
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Caleb Loehrer, staff writer, can be reached at 245-0441 or cloehrer@thegardenisland.com.
Wow! What a slap on the wrist. How many of those guns have committed a crime or are going to commit a crime or murder and he gets one month in jail for basically doing what Stephen Paddock was doing at the time of the Las Vegas massacre. Hawaii has one of the strictest gun laws and this character has 21 guns unaccounted for. How many of those 21 guns have been sold to felons? Judicial corruption on Kauai is a normal occurrence but when the judicial system on KAUAI and the state of Hawaii pushed for harsher gun laws, it was meant to send a phony political message. This proves it was just a political game. If any of the guns kill a person or tourist on Kauai or how do we know it didn’t, then the judge and PA has blood on their hands.
Does the county of Kauai prosecute anyone ?
If you’re local, you walk. You can kill your ex-wife in her driveway, and they only give you 10 years for assault. It’s sickening. Valenciano, you can bark all you want about how dangerous this guy is, but you’re not doing anything about it. He should have gotten 10 years. Those weapons of his are in the wind now. God only knows who has them. Hopefully it’s not a little
kid who’s looking down the loaded barrel of one right now, wondering how it works.
A Month!! 21 firearms and homemade silencers, you can get away with anything on the Island.
In all truth in the USA he has done absolutely nothing wrong
Putting no one in danger my be the people that think they got a right to control others in this country and they don’t have the right to period shall not be infringed says it all in the us it might be ilegal but that’s the true issue us gov n us citizen that is a corporate gov n citizen
a citizen of the USA and in the country American citizens it is totally legal two gov one place hay us gov it’s not if it’s when we are going to hold you accountable for the theft conspiracy collusion to extorting us out of your bank notes and our God given rights as free men those who forget history are doomed to repeat it (FOOLS)