Alleged shooter sentenced

LIHUE — A Lihue man was sentenced to five years in jail on Thursday for charges related to a shooting at Salt Pond Beach Park last year.

Attempted murder was dropped from the list of charges against William Cuadros, 25, when he accepted an offer from the Kauai County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office earlier this year. In that deal, Cuadros agreed to plead no contest to a single class C felony, second-degree assault, instead of the three class A felonies he originally faced — charges that could have landed him in jail for life without the possibility of parole.

Instead, Cuadros was able to negotiate a deal that reduced the severity of his charges dramatically, an outcome his lawyer said is an indication that the evidence against her client wasn’t very strong to begin with.

“In my opinion, the state’s case was purely circumstantial,” Deputy Public Defender Stephanie Char said Friday. “They didn’t have that much confidence in their case.”

Char provided few specifics about the evidence against her client, but court documents filed during pretrial negotiations may give some clue as to how the case unfolded. In December, First Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Jennifer Winn filed a motion, asking the judge to exclude evidence of previous crimes allegedly committed by Devin Cuadros, apparently a relative of William Cuadros.

“The state anticipates that defendant may allege that the crimes at issue were committed by Devin Cuadros,” Winn wrote, describing evidence of Devin Cuadros committing minor offenses such as “being truant or absent from school or getting poor grades” as irrelevant and “an improper reason on which the jury to base its verdict.”

When asked whether her client is taking the heat for one of his family members, Char said only that it did not serve the best interest of her client to discuss the matter and explained that Cuadros decided to take the plea bargain as a way to avoid leaving his fate in the hands of a jury.

“We felt that the benefit of the offer — five years compared to life — greatly outweighed the risks of going to trial,” she said.

Fifth Circuit Judge Randal Valenciano handed down the maximum allowable prison sentence on Friday morning, but Cuadros has already spent nearly a year of that term and could be eligible for early release, depending on how the state parole board handles his case.

Cuadros will also have to cover at least some of the victims’ medical bills, according to Char, who said her client was ordered to pay “upwards of $40,000” in restitution.

Cuadros was arrested in June 2018 and charged with attempted murder after a drug deal that ended in gunfire six months prior. According to charging documents filed by prosecutors, events leading to the incident unfolded like this.

A victim of the shooting had placed an ad on Craigslist to sell medical marijuana and arranged via email to meet with a potential buyer in an area near Salt Pond around 8:30 on the night of Jan. 11, 2018. At the appointed time, someone pulled up next to the victim’s vehicle in a white Ford F-150 truck, “got out and started shooting at the complainant,” the memo said.

In documents supporting charges against Cuadros, prosecutors said Google and Craigslist records show the victim’s prospective customer had registered with Craigslist under the name “Aiza Smith,” using an email account created three days before the shooting and deleted less than a half hour after.

On June 25, Kauai Police officers searched a white Ford F-150 registered to Cuadros’ girlfriend, Amaleen Almazan, and “recovered a black memo pad which contained notes that said aizasmith420@gmail.com,” as well as a list of “marijuana products,” according to court documents.

Police arrested Cuadros and Almazan in connection with the attempted murder and their cases began to work their way through the court system. Almazan pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor charge and was sentenced in February to a year of probation.

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Caleb Loehrer, staff writer, can be reached at 245-0441 or cloehrer@thegardenisland.com.